Beauty Plus Pity

"Beauty plus pitythat is the closest we can get to a definition of art."

Vladimir Nabokov

In this tragicomic, modern immigrant's tale, Malcolm Kwan is a twentysomething Asian American embarking on a modeling career whose life is derailed when his father dies and his fiancee leaves him. When he meets the half-sister he never knew existedthe result of his father's extramarital affairhe must work through his lifelong ambivalence as one trapped between two cultures and between two parents holding intolerable secrets.

Kevin Chong is the author of the novel "Baroque-a-Nova" (Plume) and the memoir "Neil Young Nation" (Greystone Books).

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