Emma Pei Yin
When Sleeping Women Wake
“This beautifully complex, thoroughly researched novel is both a love story and an historical revelation . . . A story that cried out to be told, with its its compassion and its clear new eyes.”
Hachette, 2025
An epic and emotional story of three spirited women - a mother, her daughter, their maid - during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong
1941. The wealthy Tang family has settled in Hong Kong after fleeing Shanghai. As the First Wife of the family, Mingzhu leads a glamorous but lonely existence - mothering the son of her husband's concubine, overseeing her daughter Qiang's education, and directing their household of servants, including her long-time confidante, Biyu.
When the Japanese invade the island, the three women's paths wildly diverge. Mingzhu's affinity for languages spares her physical labour but she's coerced into serving an enemy captain. Qiang and Biyu suffer brutal factory work and food rations until an encounter with the East River Column Resistance fighters separates them. As war rages around them, each woman holds onto the hope that the others are alive. Can they fight for their freedom and still find their way back to each other?
About the Author
Emma Pei Yin is an Australian-Hong Kong Chinese writer and editor. Her work has been featured in publications such as Mekong Review, Being Asian Australian, HerCanberra, Aniko Press, The Hong Kong Review and Books+Publishing. In 2023, BookPeople and Penguin Random House Australia nominated her as Bookseller of the Year. That same year, her manuscript, Chasing Echoes in the Rain, was shortlisted for the Allen & Unwin Voices from the Intersection Mentorship Programme. She lives and works on Ngunnawal Country with her partner and their extremely barky dachshund, Lady. When Sleeping Women Wake is her first novel.
