Peter Ho Davies novel “The Fortunes” has been aptly described as “sly, funny, intelligent, and artfully structured.” “The Fortunes” expands the notion of a multigenerational novel by moving beyond the saga of a single family to the story of Chinese Americans beginning in the 1860’s - - - Ah Ling, a laundryman and railway worker in the1860’s; Anna May Wong a film star in 1920’s and 30’s; Vincent Chin, a young man beaten to death by two auto workers in Detroit in 1982; and finally, a Chinese American and his wife who travel to China to adopt a baby girl.

Joyce Carol Oates describes it as “A prophetic work, with passages of surpassing beauty…”

The Times Literary Supplement said The Fortunes “Should take its place as a seminal, defining text on the Chinese-American experience.”

“The Fortunes” was a New York Times Notable Book, won the Anisfield-Wolf Award and the Chautauqua Prize, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Peter Ho Davies is a contemporary writer of Welsh and Chinese descent. He was born and raised in Coventry, England. He studied physics at Manchester University and then English at Cambridge University. In 1992, he moved to the United States to study in the graduate creative writing program at Boston University.

He has taught at the University of Oregon and at Emory University and is currently the Charles Baxter Collegiate Professor of English Language and Literature in the Helen Zell MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of Michigan. Peter Ho Davies is the author of the novels “A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself” (2021), “The Fortunes” (2016) and “The Welsh Girl” (2007), as well as the story collections “The Ugliest House in the World” (1997) and “Equal Love” (2000).

He has won numerous prizes for his short stories as well as his novels. Professor Davies lives in Ann Arbor with his wife and son.

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