THE WALKING BOY. The second novel in the

Second in the duology

The Walking Boy is a quest novel set in early eighth-century Tang Dynasty China, in the final days of the rule of the first Female Emperor Wu Zhao. The ailing hermit monk Harelip sends his disciple Baoshi on a pilgrimage from Mount Hua to Chang'an, the Western capital; Baoshi is the "walking boy" charged with locating Harelip's missing former lover Ardhanari. Baoshi lives with a secret only his Master knows, and he is filled with fears of being discovered. On his journey, Baoshi crosses paths with both commoners and imperial officials, as well as others who take delight in their queer identities; in doing so, he is released powerfully from his past shame.

The Walking Boy, set in the years following Kwa's recent novel Oracle Bone, is a book of quiet subversion, upending classical Chinese tropes with contemporary ideas around gender and feminism. Filled with psychological complexities, magic and poetic allusions to classical Chinese literature, The Walking Boy explores the intrigue of inner alchemy while exorcising the ghosts of history.

Lydia Kwa is the author of the novels Oracle Bone,This Place Called Absence (shortlisted for the Books in Canada First Novel Award), The Walking Boy (shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize), and Pulse, as well as two books of poetry, The Colours of Heroines and sinuous. A new updated edition of The Walking Boy was published in 2019. She lives and works in Vancouver as a writer and psychologist.