To my whole family, thank you. To my father, Moon Jung Chung, who infused my life with his love of mathematics, and whose math-riddles and stories are woven throughout this book as they were through my childhood, I thank you, and am grateful every day that you were my dad. To my mama, Sejin Chung, I owe you everything. Thank you forever times infinity. And to all mamas who give so much so that their children can flourish—bless you all, every one. To my beloved grandmother, thank you. Thank you to Heesoo Chung, for being the coolest and best brother in all the land, and my go-to person for questions about radios and building things and rockets and science. To Dawn and Olivia, I am so grateful to have you in my life.
And to David and Ella, agh! What can I say? You make me so happy. You just blast my life through with joy.
About the Author
CATHERINE CHUNG won an Honorable Mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award with her first novel, Forgotten Country, and has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a Granta New Voice, and a Director’s Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. She has a degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago, and worked at a think tank in Santa Monica before receiving her MFA from Cornell University. She has published work in the New York Times and Granta, and is a fiction editor at Guernica magazine. She lives in New York City.
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Also by Catherine Chung
Forgotten Country
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.
THE TENTH MUSE. Copyright © 2019 by Catherine Chung. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Cover design by Joan Wong
Cover images, clockwise from top left: “Chinese bankers guild in North Honan Road, Shanghai,” 1907–1918 and “Portrait of Japanese woman,” 1900–1940, both courtesy of The New York Public Library Digital Collections, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Picture Collection, The New York Public Library; abstract wave © BurstF1re/Shutterstock; German town © Joyfull/Shutterstock; soldier © PhotoQuest/Getty Images
Digital Edition JUNE 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-257409-1
Version 04052019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-257406-0
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