A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven

A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven is a multiple award-winning international literary debut novel that explores what happens when a writer gives up on fiction to delve into the truth of her own youth. It is a compelling read for fans of Han Kang, Elena Ferrante, and Lucia Berlin.

The only difference between fiction and memoir is Truth...

A MULTIPLE TAIWANESE AWARD WINNER

Translated by Lin King, the translator of International Booker Prize-winner, Taiwan Travelogue.

Reader love for A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven:

* 'Reading this made me fly back to my own past'

* 'I enjoyed its tenderness. Like the protagonist at the end, I felt warmth float into my eyes'

* 'Interesting and philosophical. This cleverly considers the differences between fiction and reality'

This is a genre-defying novel from a rare new international voice for fans of Lucia Berlin, Elena Ferrante, and Han Kang. It follows a writer who gives up on fiction to uncover the truth of her own youth.

Faced with writer's block, Tan's attempts to write her first novel are faltering. Instead, she embarks on a memoir, sparking lively dialogue with old friends as they search their memories to examine what each recalls and why. Was it really a dinner-table game that revealed her parents were on the brink of divorce? And was her aunt's shower curtain really made up of raincoats?

Soon, her work-in-progress starts to acquire a life of its own, gradually eclipsing the past and replacing it with something new. After Tan has put her story into a metaphorical oven, what emerges is not a faithful record of the past, but a freshly baked creation forged from memory, imagination, and desire.

Moving between past and present, childhood and adulthood, self and others, A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven humorously transforms a personal search for truth into a surprising meditation on our human desire to make sense of our lives.

'A gorgeous, surprising and deeply intelligent book. I read it rapt and awestruck' - Claire Vaye Watkins

* 'A book to read over and over'

* 'This is not only a process of "memory reconstruction," but also a dialectic of "fiction vs. reality"'

* 'Its words are like a whirlpool, pulling me back to my teenage years'