Radha Lin Chaddah's novel spans decades of seismic change in post-Cultural Revolution China. And The Ancestors Sing is a sweeping, multigenerational novel of resilience, sacrifice, and the unbreakable pull of home. In 1978, as the Cultural Revolution fades into history. Lei is bartered away into marriage for two cartons of cigarettes and a handful of eggs, and she finds herself in the unfamiliar village of her new husband where she is met with indifference. When a disaster upends their world, Lei and her husband are forced to join China’s vast wave of city-bound, rural migrants, leaving behind children whom they may never see again.

Sixteen-year-old LuLu arrives in Shanghai with nothing but ambition. Denied a factory job and determined to keep her family from starving, she turns to sex work, navigating the dangers of the city’s underbelly with sharp wit and a fierce will to survive. When a powerful client offers her a chance at security, LuLu faces an impossible choice: seize a future that could lift her family from poverty, or risk everything for a life on her own terms.

Radha Lin Chaddah was born in London to an East Indian father and a Malaysian Chinese mother. She grew up in Kenya, the UK, and the US. After earning medical, law, and public health degrees, she and family have lived across the globe before settling in Philadelphia. And the Ancestors Sing is her first novel.

Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir Cinderland and the novel Shiner, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick and an NPR Best Book of the year. Her latest novel, Mercury, is a Book of the Month Pick, a People Magazine Book of the Week, and a The New York Times Editor’s Choice selection. Amy Jo’s next novel Wait for Me will be published in March 2026.

This event is co-sponsored by the Princeton Public Library and Labyrinth Books.