A cult classic and Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, this sharp, insightful novel by New Yorker contributor Han Ong explores racial and social hierarchy, personal identity, and alienation.
William Paulinha—a resourceful gay Filipino sex worker barely getting by in New York—is determined to turn his life around when he crosses paths with Shem C., an on-the-rise author now disgraced and exiled from both his marriage and the city’s literary inner circle. Furious at the world that cast him out, Shem finds in the intelligent and pliable William the perfect accomplice for his plans.
Under Shem’s tutelage, William reinvents himself as “Master Chao,” an enigmatic Feng Shui consultant catering to New York’s wealthiest and most self-satisfied classes. As doors swing open and fortunes are arranged and rearranged, William is pulled ever deeper into the private anxieties and secret desires of the powerful, discovering just how much people will pay to believe that even their moral rot can be purified and saved.
Blending razor-sharp satire with tenderness and psychological insight, Fixer Chao traces a dazzling ascent built on illusion and audacious transformation. By turns funny, devastating, and electrifying, Ong’s writing asks what it takes to remake oneself in America—and what, if anything, remains when the performance finally ends.
William Paulinha—a resourceful gay Filipino sex worker barely getting by in New York—is determined to turn his life around when he crosses paths with Shem C., an on-the-rise author now disgraced and exiled from both his marriage and the city’s literary inner circle. Furious at the world that cast him out, Shem finds in the intelligent and pliable William the perfect accomplice for his plans.
Under Shem’s tutelage, William reinvents himself as “Master Chao,” an enigmatic Feng Shui consultant catering to New York’s wealthiest and most self-satisfied classes. As doors swing open and fortunes are arranged and rearranged, William is pulled ever deeper into the private anxieties and secret desires of the powerful, discovering just how much people will pay to believe that even their moral rot can be purified and saved.
Blending razor-sharp satire with tenderness and psychological insight, Fixer Chao traces a dazzling ascent built on illusion and audacious transformation. By turns funny, devastating, and electrifying, Ong’s writing asks what it takes to remake oneself in America—and what, if anything, remains when the performance finally ends.
Author
Han Ong
HAN ONG is an American playwright and novelist. He has written fourteen plays and two novels: Fixer Chao, first published by FSG in 2001, and The Disinherited, published in 2004. Chao has published stories in The New Yorker and Zoetrope and is the recipient of the Joseph Kesselring Prize for his play Swoony Planet, as well as a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction, and the TCG/NEA Playwriting Award. Fixer Chao was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year in 2001, and The Disinherited was nominated for a Lambda Book Award in 2005. Ong lives in New York.
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