By a PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize–winning writer, a grand and unflinching debut novel set against the backdrop of Mao’s Long March and its aftermath

China, 1934: A naive orphan and shy gunsmith, Ping, has fallen in love with Yong, who is a sophisticated veteran, skilled sharpshooter, and true believer in Mao and the Marxist ideology. Winning Yong’s affections will take an ideological battle—something Ping does not at first understand. As the Red Army begins its yearlong tactical retreat, the Long March, Yong turns to Ping for comfort and companionship. Yong becomes pregnant, and soon their son is born. The Army can’t retreat with a crying infant, so they leave the child with a village woman and promise to return once the war is won.

When World War II breaks out and Japanese soldiers arrive in the village, their now twelve year-old son enlists in the Japanese army to find his parents. Deeply moving and rendered in spare, muscular prose, Michael X. Wang’s marvel of a debut novel, Lost in the Long March, drives toward a shocking reunion and resolution. Following the characters to the China of the 1970s and Mao’s Communist Party as it has evolved, Michael X. Wang tells a story that masterfully contrasts the intimate with the political, brilliantly revealing how the history of a country is always the story of its people, even though their stories can be the first to be lost.