Where Are You Really from - by Elaine Hsieh Chou (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In these eight singular stories that pivot seamlessly from the terrible to the beautiful to the surreal, Elaine Hsieh Chou peels back the tales we tell ourselves to peer beneath them: at our unspoken desires, our self-deceptions and our capacity for cruelty, both to ourselves and each other"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

*A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2025 BY LITHUB, THE OC REGISTER, THE MILLIONS AND MORE * NAMED A BEST BOOK OF AUGUST 2025 BY PEOPLE MAGAZINE * NAMED A MUST-READ BOOK BY THE CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS * THE STRAND'S AUGUST 2025 PICK-OF-THE-MONTH * SELECTED AS AN AUGUST 2025 READ BY VULTURE *

"Scintillating ... These expressive and atmospheric tales mesmerize" --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Chou is gifted at storytelling with a surrealistic bent ... Sharp storytelling that bends and blurs genre expectations." --Kirkus (starred review)

From the critically-acclaimed author of Disorientation, a multi-genre story collection that explores the limits and possibilities of storytelling

A mail order bride from Taiwan is packed up in a cardboard box and sent via express shipping to California, where her much older husband awaits her. Two teenage girls meticulously plan how to kill and cook their downstairs neighbor. An American au pair moves to Paris to find herself, only to find her actual French doppelgänger. A father reunites with his estranged daughter in unusual circumstances: as a background actor on the set of her film. A writer's affair with a married artist tests the line between fact and fiction, self-victimization and the victimization of others.

In these six singular stories and a novella that pivot from the terrible to the beautiful to the surreal, Elaine Hsieh Chou confronts the slipperiness of truth in storytelling. With razor-sharp precision and psychological acuity, she peels back the tales we tell ourselves to peer beneath them: at our treacherous desires, our self-deceptions and our capacity for cruelty, both to ourselves and each other. Expansive and provocative, Where Are You Really From is a visionary achievement.

Review Quotes

"Elaine Hsieh Chou dazzles with these rich, highly original and sometimes shocking stories in her collection of fiction, Where Are You Really From. Chou wanders in and out of a kind of magic realism, exploring our capability for self-deception and cruelty." --Associated Press

"A mail-order bride, cannibal teens, doppelgängers and love affairs: This surreal, evocative collection traces desire and self-deception in stories that range from unsettling to downright bizarre. You won't want to miss this one." --People

"Where Are You Really From, Elaine Hsieh Chou's stylistically complex story collection, offers intriguing glimpses into the ways in which we have become captive to a habit of continually evaluating our own identities. With glints of sardonic humor and razor-sharp surrealistic details, she reveals the layers of self hiding behind performative masks adopted by a wide range of characters." --LitHub

"Reading Where Are You Really From feels like exploring a liminal space; her stories are deeply witty and slightly off-kilter, nestled perfectly at the boundary between the impossible and the all too plausible." --Chicago Review of Books, 12 Must-Read Books of August

"Chou is consistent in her ability to create an eerie, uncanny version of circumstances we could expect in real life. Each story ends in a way that makes you tip your head back in bewilderment, a reminder that there is no base reality on which everyone's narrative is built . . . Where Are You Really From sparkles in the way it infuses dark concepts with whimsy and detail . . . Chou seems less invested in establishing a firm stance on anything and more about unsettling assumptions and questioning the first version of the story that you hear--her answer to the titular question is infinitely more questions." --Chicago Review of Books

"Elaine Hsieh Chou's clever and beguiling short story collection Where Are You Really From explores issues of identity and belonging with a speculative twist . . . She flips stereotypes on their ears, turning her stories into funhouse mirrors that challenge her protagonists--and readers--to navigate worlds that are both strange and all too familiar . . . All the stories showcase Chou's audacious talent for wordplay alongside her deep empathy . . . The stories can become surprisingly tender or melancholic and wistful or even furious . . . Readers will delight in these thoughtful, provocative and often very, very funny stories." --The Minnesota Star Tribune

"The six stories and novella in this scintillating collection from Chou (Disorientation) explore themes of beauty, identity, and morality . . . Throughout, Chou's surrealism feels all too real, whether in the concluding novella, 'Casualties of Art, ' an intimate exploration of an illicit affair, or in 'Happy Endings, ' the story of a DNA researcher in Hong Kong who visits a virtual reality sex-bot brothel where intercourse is a 'constant negotiation, a high-wire act with the thinnest of lines separating pleasure from violence.' These expressive and atmospheric tales mesmerize." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"A clutch of stories that starkly question assumptions about our identities . . . Chou's debut collection--following the novel Disorientation (2022)--is built on premises where characters' sense of self is rattled . . . Chou is gifted at storytelling with a surrealistic bent . . . The collection's title is a classic microaggression--a way to box people as foreign or other. Nobody in the book actually utters the question, but throughout Chou cleverly exposes just how difficult humanity is to simplify, whatever our provenance. Sharp storytelling that bends and blurs genre expectations." --Kirkus (starred review)

"Characters grapple with desire, loneliness, acceptance, self-fulfillment, and obsession in these haunting, character-driven tales that lead readers on enticingly mysterious trajectories. Complex protagonists find themselves in strange situations tackling literal origins like race and culture, or in abstractions like emotions, behaviors, and viewpoints . . . Thought-provoking and astute, Chou's compelling latest (after her debut, Disorientation, 2022) leaves readers in capable hands." --Booklist (starred review)

"While deftly exploring diverse genres--coming-of-age, speculative, contemporary realism, auto- and meta-fiction--Chou convincingly interrogates and exposes unsettling relationships between family members, lovers, and former strangers . . . Yes, fiction is imagined and created, but Chou also manages to shrewdly, impressively deceive . . . Chou's intriguing first collection of stories showcases diverse genres, agitated relationships, and--oh, so very cleverly--unreliable narration." --Shelf Awareness

"Fast-paced, elusive, deceptive, and genre-bending . . . Where Are You Really From covers the messiness of desire and the search for identity, companionship, and family--along with the stories we tell ourselves. Chou's narratives stand out due to her remarkable creativity . . . Chou revitalizes the short story form by stretching the boundaries of the genre, bringing a fresh and lively perspective." --BookBrowse

"Chou's clever collection, which includes short stories and a novella, features a cast of characters who invariably find themselves in extraordinary situations that shake up their sense of self and make them reconsider their place in the world." --The Millions

"Following Chou's successful debut novel, Disorientation, comes a collection of six stories and a novella, all featuring intriguing Asian and Asian American characters . . . Chou's writing maintains its humor while touching on serious, even taboo topics, such as interracial adoption, ethnocentrism, sex work, and fidelity . . . Chou establishes herself as a writer to watch with another thought-provoking offering. For readers who can appreciate Chou's no-holds-barred approach to storytelling, this collection is an excellent book-club candidate." --Library Journal

"Delicious, confessional, shocking, and poignant--this collection is like getting to hear every conversation at the world's most interesting dinner party. Chou crafts unexpected twists at the intersections of identity, sexuality, and obsession to make each story a wholly new surprise. It's impossible to put this masterful book down." --Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love and Tampa

"It's the clarity of the voice that gets me here--Chou's worlds are strange and new and absurd, but the prose is utterly convincing and I found myself happily immersed in each new story's investigation. Thoroughly enjoyable!" --Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and The Girl in the Flammable Skirt

"Chou is the rare writer who can serve up dark truths with equal helpings of humor and heart. Where Are You Really From is full of piercing insight, an ambitious and imaginative collection where surreal scenarios tell very human stories." --Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl

"In Where Are You Really From, Chou's stories drip with her signature dark humor and blistering wit--as well as a startling compassion. I was enamored by this collection's formal daring and speculative fiction aspects, as much as I admired Chou's exploration of identity, gender, and artifice. How can the murky lies we tell ourselves and others, our deceptions, and even fiction as an art form, be used to reveal deeper truths about ourselves and the world? A riotous, memorable, and altogether devastating book. My favorite short story collection that I've read this year." --Daphne Palasi Andreades, author of Brown Girls

"Elaine Hsieh Chou is a magnificent satirist and in Where Are You Really From, is right at home in the short form. These tales disquiet, provoke, and shimmer with intelligence like a school of fish. Most of all, they make you laugh, the kind of laughter that makes the truth almost bearable." --John Freeman, author of Dictionary of the Undoing

About the Author

Elaine Hsieh Chou is a Taiwanese American author and screenwriter from California. Described as "the funniest, most poignant novel of the year" by Vogue, her debut novel Disorientation was a New York Times Editors' Choice Book, New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award Finalist and Thurber Prize Finalist. A former Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow at New York University, her Pushcart Award-winning short fiction appears in Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Tin House Online, Ploughshares and The Atlantic, while her essays appear in The Cut and Vanity Fair. She is a Fred R. Brown Literary Award recipient, a Sundance Episodic Lab Fellow and a Gotham Series Creator to Watch. Her work has been supported by the Harry Ransom Center, the New York Foundation for the Arts and Hedgebrook's Writers-in-Residence Program.