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Vanessa Chan

Biography

Vanessa Chan

Vanessa Chan was born and raised in Malaysia. Her short stories have been published in Electric Lit, Kenyon Review, Ecotone and more. She was the 2021 Stanley Elkin scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference and has also received scholar awards to attend the Bread Loaf and Tin House writers’ conferences. THE STORM WE MADE is her first novel.

Vanessa Chan

Books by Vanessa Chan

by Vanessa Chan - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

Malaya, 1945. Cecily Alcantara’s 15-year-old son, Abel, has disappeared, and her youngest daughter, Jasmin, is confined in a basement to prevent being pressed into service at the comfort stations. Her eldest daughter Jujube, who works at a tea house frequented by drunk Japanese soldiers, becomes angrier by the day. A decade prior, Cecily had been desperate to be more than a housewife to a low-level bureaucrat in British-colonized Malaya. A chance meeting with the charismatic General Fuijwara lured her into a life of espionage, pursuing dreams of an “Asia for Asians.” Instead, Cecily helped usher in an even more brutal occupation by the Japanese. Ten years later, as the war reaches its apex, her actions have caught up with her. Now her family is on the brink of destruction --- and she will do anything to save them.