The Hunger We Pass Down: A Novel
Jen Sookfong Lee
Sep 2025 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Christine L. Nguyen
headphones
Audiobook
10 hr 51 min
Unabridged
family_home
Eligible
info
Want a free 10 min sample? Listen anytime, even offline.
Add
About this audiobook
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2026 • LONGLISTED FOR THE SUNBURST AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE JIM DEVA PRIZE FOR WRITING THAT PROVOKES • FINALIST FOR THE CRIME WRITERS OF CANADA PETER ROBINSON AWARD FOR BEST CRIME NOVEL
From the bestselling author of Superfan comes a haunting novel about the demons passed down through five generations of women in a Chinese Canadian family, and what it might take for them to finally break free of the past. Will you break your mother's curse before it consumes you?
Single mother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online business, a resentful teenage daughter, a screen-obsessed son, and a secret boyfriend, she can never get everything done in a day. So it’s a relief when Alice wakes up one morning to find the counters are clear, the kids’ rooms are tidy, and orders are neatly packed and labelled. But she doesn’t remember staying up late to take care of things. As the strange pattern continues, she realizes someone—or something—has been doing her chores for her.
Alice knows she should feel uneasy, but the extra time lets her connect with her children and with her hard-edged mother, who has started to share shocking stories from their family history—beginning with the horrors that befell her great-grandmother, who was imprisoned as a comfort woman in Hong Kong during the Second World War. But the family’s demons—both real and subconscious, old and new—are about to become impossible to ignore.
Set against the gleaming backdrop of contemporary Vancouver, The Hunger We Pass Down is a devastating, horror-tinged novel about how unspoken legacies of violence can shape a family. It follows the relentless spectre of intergenerational trauma as it is handed down from mother to daughter, and asks what it might take to break the cycle—heroism, depravity, or both.
From the bestselling author of Superfan comes a haunting novel about the demons passed down through five generations of women in a Chinese Canadian family, and what it might take for them to finally break free of the past. Will you break your mother's curse before it consumes you?
Single mother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online business, a resentful teenage daughter, a screen-obsessed son, and a secret boyfriend, she can never get everything done in a day. So it’s a relief when Alice wakes up one morning to find the counters are clear, the kids’ rooms are tidy, and orders are neatly packed and labelled. But she doesn’t remember staying up late to take care of things. As the strange pattern continues, she realizes someone—or something—has been doing her chores for her.
Alice knows she should feel uneasy, but the extra time lets her connect with her children and with her hard-edged mother, who has started to share shocking stories from their family history—beginning with the horrors that befell her great-grandmother, who was imprisoned as a comfort woman in Hong Kong during the Second World War. But the family’s demons—both real and subconscious, old and new—are about to become impossible to ignore.
Set against the gleaming backdrop of contemporary Vancouver, The Hunger We Pass Down is a devastating, horror-tinged novel about how unspoken legacies of violence can shape a family. It follows the relentless spectre of intergenerational trauma as it is handed down from mother to daughter, and asks what it might take to break the cycle—heroism, depravity, or both.
AN INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2026 • LONGLISTED FOR THE SUNBURST AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE JIM DEVA PRIZE FOR WRITING THAT PROVOKES • FINALIST FOR THE CRIME WRITERS OF CANADA PETER ROBINSON AWARD FOR BEST CRIME NOVEL
From the bestselling author of Superfan comes a ...
Discover more
About the author
JEN SOOKFONG LEE was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, and she now lives with her son in North Burnaby. Her memoir, Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart, was a finalist for the 2024 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award, was named a Best Book of 2023 by the Globe and Mail and Apple Books Canada, and was a TODAY Show Recommended Read. Jen is also the author of The Conjoined, longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award; The End of East; The Shadow List; and Finding Home. Jen acquires and edits books for ECW Press.
JEN SOOKFONG LEE was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, and she now lives with her son in North Burnaby. Her memoir, Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart, was a finalist for the 2024 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award, was named a Best Book of 2023 b...
Rate this audiobook
Tell us what you think.
Listening information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can read books purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
