Sarah Howe, "Foretokens" (Random House, 2025)

'Unearthed in a clear-out, a picture calendar she’s kept
– hoarding, I’ve learnt, is a mark of the emigrant –
across continents and time.'
So begins Sarah Howe’s extraordinary new collection, Foretokens, returning to the riddle of belonging she explored in her award-winning debut, Loop of Jade. At the heart is her own mother’s clouded past: abandoned as a baby and taken in, at the turbulent dawn of Communist China, by a woman with her own hidden motives. Now a mother herself, Howe finds herself re-examining this unreliable narrative with fresh sight. Sifting through her own...