WANG, Sarah
New Skin

“Sarah Wang’s denut novel New Skin follows Linli, the daughter of a plastic surgery addict, whose life is lived in lockstep with her mother’s latest medical catastrophes. Set in Los Angeles, the book traces an exciting yet disastrous period in their lives, when Fanny, Linli’s mother, joins the cast of a reality TV competition in which botched contestants compete for a complete reconstructive makeover. Though she no longer recognizes her mother’s new face, Linli fights, at the cost of her own sanity, to save Fanny from self-destruction. A source of both hilarity and heartbreak, Linli and Fanny’s mother-daughter dynamic propels the novel’s core concerns about identity and belonging. This page-turner features gritty and intelligent analyses of immigration, Americanism, and deadly beauty standards.”
—Amy Y.Q. Lin, Los Angeles Review of Books

Published by Brown & Company, 2026
Literature