REGRETS

Twenty-five years in the making, REGRETS is Sharon Chung's – who is widely considered a spiritual successor of Eileen Chang – literary masterpiece and a once-in-a-lifetime publishing event. This is Downton Abbey meets Match Point in pre-handover Hong Kong, both a haunting family saga and a dark retelling of the classic Chinese novel A Dream Of Red Mansions.

When Yati-Ping visits his aunt, Chun, at the Wong Mansion on Victoria Peak, he has no idea he is about to enter a world of passion, intrigue, and madness. Chun is Mr. Wong's second wife, a frail and sickly woman who cannot set foot outside. She beseeches Yati-Ping to look after her willful daughter, Po-Chuen, by becoming her private tutor. A bond develops between the cousins, yet Mr. Wong deems it inappropriate and fires Yati-Ping, unexpectedly triggering a string of tragic events.

Although forced to leave, Yati-Ping remains inseparable from the Wongs' affairs. In the years that follow, he is befriended by Cheng-Yiu, Mr. Wong's adopted son and designated heir, who is a shrewd and cold-blooded manipulator; he falls in love with Kam-Chuen, daughter of Mr Wong and his first wife, only to discover that she's pregnant with someone else's child; he is beaten up by Ching Hon, the family driver and son of the housekeeper, who sees him as a threat; he is seduced by Wang-Tai, the sexy Portuguese heiress about to marry Cheng-Yiu; and he is equally confused and enamored by Po-Chuen, now a beautiful young woman, who still recalls his tutor sessions with fondness.

Soon, a death in the swimming pool will threaten to shatter the whole family, and a kidnapping plot gone awry will reveal something far more sinister

Selling points:
+ First written in 1991-1995, published in 1996
+ Now completely rewritten from 2011-2017, published in 2018
+ Instant bestseller in Taiwan, now in third printing
+ Author widely considered a spiritual successor of Eileen Chang
+ Perfect mix of literary writing and page-turning family drama
+ Downton Abbey meets Match Point for Pre-Handover Hong Kong
+ Simplified Chinese rights sold to ThinKingdom (China)
+ Strong Film/TV interests (this would make a great Netflix series)
+ Author lives in the US and speaks fluent English

It was widely reviewed in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and Chang Ta-Chun, who is himself one of the most important novelist in Taiwan, proclaims that REGRETS is "The best Chinese-language novel I've read in the past ten years."

https://theinitium.com/article/20180805-culture-siuyoungchungthewriter/
https://www.businesstoday.com.tw/article/category/154769/post/201807040030/
https://www.openbook.org.tw/article/p-18732
https://paratext.hk/?p=1053
https://okapi.books.com.tw/article/11032
https://www.i-media.tw/news/detail.html?id=10626
https://www.zaobao.com.sg/zlifestyle/culture/story20180820-884490

Sharon Chung was born in Guangzhou but soon moved to Hong Kong with her parents. She published her first novel, A PINWHEEL WITHOUT WIND - actually a book of three linked novellas - when she was 18, and it became an overnight sensation in Taiwan, selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

Sharon got her BA in Film Studies in University of Michigan in the US, immigrated to Australia with her parents before the 1997 Handover, where she wrote her second novel, SILENT TRUTHS. She later returned to Hong Kong.

SILENT TRUTHS was published in 1996 by Rye Field in Taiwan. It's the third book in their prestigious “Contemporary Chinese Novelists” series edited by David Der-Wei Wang, who wrote an introduction to the book. Authors who have been published in this series include Su Tong, Yu Hua, Mo Yan, Yan Geling, Chu Tien-wen, and Wang Anyi.

Sharon vanished from the literary scene afterward to take care of her ill sister, who died of cancer a few years later at the age of 39. They were very close so this was most devastating, and Sharon would spend the next decade doing translation and film subtitles, until 2008, when a new edition of PINWHEEL was published and she was "discovered" by a new generation of readers. Sharon now lives in San Francisco with her husband.

Sharon spent the past five years completely rewriting SILENT TRUTHS, keeping the basic storyline and characters, but enriching the narrative with so much details of the time (pre-handover Hong Kong), also making the story, which had already been filled with twists and turns, even more surprising and satisfying. One critic puts it this way: REGRETS transforms melodrama into Greek tragedy. Well said!