Hutchinson Heinemann seizes Khong’s ‘immersive’ multi-generational novel

Hutchinson Heinemann has acquired Real Americans by Rachel Khong, the follow up to her acclaimed début Goodbye, Vitamin (Scribner).

Publishing director Charlotte Cray obtained UK and Commonwealth rights, excluding Canada, at auction from Marya Spence at Janklow & Nesbit. Real Americans will be published in the US by John Freeman at Knopf, who acquired the novel in a 17-way auction. It will be published in hardback, audio and e-book in spring 2024.

Following three members of a Chinese-American family stretching from Communist China in the 1960s to Silicon Valley in the near future, Real Americans explores themes of status, belonging and the morality of inheritance, through a surprising twist of science.

Real Americans spans three generations, starting in New York City in the early 2000s, diving deep into Mao’s cultural revolution. “Young Lily Chen is a struggling intern when she meets her boss’s trust fund nephew, the charming Matthew,” the synopsis reads. “Khong eviscerates each social situation that would divide them with profound understanding of belonging; but fall in love they do. And we next meet Lily, a single mum to son Nick as he prepares to fly the nest and go to college. This juncture brings to the fore thoughts that have dogged Nick all his life: his missing father, a physical identity that has never felt like his own.

“Unspoken questions haunt Lily and Nick; yet the answers lie closer than they think. Khong explores fate, class, love and legacy with masterful precision, wit and empathy.”

Cray said: “Khong has reinvented the sweeping multi-generational novel about identity and inheritance, and turned it on its head. This is a book about belonging and the extraordinary extents we’ll go to for the next generation. I’m excited to have such fresh, ambitious and immersive storytelling on the list.”

Khong was named winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and a Best Book of the Year by NPR, O, the Oprah Magazine and Vogue. Her short fiction is known for its speculative twists and has been published in the Paris Review, Tin House, the Cut, and American Short Fiction, among others. Goodbye, Vitamin has been optioned by Dylan Clark Productions, starring Constance Wu.

“It’s an honour to have Real Americans published with Hutchinson Heinemann and to join their impressive roster of writers, so many of whom I have great admiration for,” Khong said. “I have worked on this novel for so long that it is a thrill to have an editor in Charlotte Cray, as well as in John Freeman stateside. Real Americans is a book about the stories we tell, and have told to us; it’s about the choices that we make, and choices already made for us. My hope is that it resonates with readers in the UK.”