Elliot & Thompson signs Candice Chung’s memoir Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You

Elliott & Thompson has acquired Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You: A Memoir of Saying the Unsayable with Food by Candice Chung.

Publishing director Sarah Rigby acquired UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) from international rights manager Sandra Buol at Allen & Unwin, Australia. The book will be published in hardback, e-book and audio on 25th April 2025.

The memoir grew out of Chung’s story, Why Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You, which was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald over 10 years ago.

The book’s description reads: “What is the most unsayable thing you have ever wanted to say to your parents? A long-held gripe, a difficult secret, a bottled up swear word or two? For newly single food journalist Candice Chung, there’s been one thing on her mind lately: ‘If anything happens, I love you.’ Simple. Reasonable. A message that, during bathroom mirror rehearsals, makes herself a little teary, even. If only her retired Cantonese parents weren’t so allergic to the word ‘love’. Still, she’s determined to tackle what’s left unsaid. To find a different vocabulary. A way to unscramble what her family has been trying to tell each other all along—not in Cantonese or English—but with food.”

As Chung dives into the rituals of dining as a family, and her parents offer to join her at restaurants she is due to review, she begins to unravel how a decade of silence and distance have shaped their relationship. Through shared meals and culinary adventures, the synopsis continues, they begin to confront the unspoken and what it means to show care when you come from a culture where saying ‘I love you’ isn’t the norm.

Rigby said: “I am thrilled to be bringing Candice’s warm, wry and generous voice to the Elliott & Thompson list. She fills her scenes with delicious detail—a hotpot surrounded with ‘private’ and ‘public’ chopsticks; a Cantonese couple holding hands in hiking gear; a pyramid of prawn casings; a bubbling paprika octopus. There is such joy and truth to be found in how the food we eat together can become a conduit to connection—and I know so many readers will feel this too.”

Chung said: “I am delighted for Chinese Parents Don’t Say I Love You to find a home in Elliott & Thompson’s exciting list. This is a deeply personal project to me, and I am thrilled to be working with Sarah and her team to bring the book to its readers.”