The Book of Crows A Novel

In his second novel, the acclaimed author of Under Fishbone Clouds reaches across Chinese history with lyrically interwoven tales of human longing.

It is said that the Book of Crows contains the entire history of the world—past, present, and future. Equally sought after and feared, this mysterious book touches lives both high and low, young and old, ancient and modern. In a series of narratives spanning millennia, author Sam Meekings conjures a tale both epic and intimate.

When a teenage girl is abducted, she soon finds herself facing a new life in a remote mountain brothel. Thousands of years later, a humble bureaucrat must search for a missing colleague in the rubble from a devastating landslide. While travelling the Silk Road, a medieval Franciscan monk offers shocking revelations in the form of a deathbed confession. And a Chinese poet must put grief aside to answer a call to the Emperor’s palace.

Each of them will in some way feel the powerful influence of the Book of Crows.

Sam Meekings is a British novelist, poet, and academic. His fiction has been acclaimed by the New York Times, and his other works have been published in Best American Essays, the Journal of Creative Writing Studies, and Life Writing. Meekings earned a PhD from Lancaster University, and he has edited and authored several pedagogical publications, particularly focusing on the intersection of trauma and creative writing. He currently works as Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Northwestern University in Qatar.