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An Excess Male: A Novel
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Description

From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classics The Handmaid's Tale and When She Woke.

Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son. Now 40 million of them can't find wives.

China's One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own. An Excess Male is one such leftover man's quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.

Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law. Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.

In Maggie Shen King's startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Male looks to explore the intersection of marriage, family, gender, and state in an all-too-plausible future.

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Format:
OverDrive MP3 Audiobook, OverDrive Listen
Edition:
Unabridged
Street Date:
09/12/2017
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780062790859
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APA Citation (style guide)

Maggie Shen King. (2017). An Excess Male: A Novel. Unabridged HarperAudio.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)

Maggie Shen King. 2017. An Excess Male: A Novel. HarperAudio.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)

Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male: A Novel. HarperAudio, 2017.

MLA Citation (style guide)

Maggie Shen King. An Excess Male: A Novel. Unabridged HarperAudio, 2017.

Note! Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2022. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy.
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Date Added:
Jun 12, 2018 17:10:46
Date Updated:
Oct 31, 2022 21:37:32
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        Maggie Shen King is the author of An Excess Male (Harper Voyager), one of The Washington Post's 5 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels of 2017. She is Goodreads September 2017 Debut Author the Month. Her short stories have appeared in Ecotone, ZYZZYVA, Asimov's Science Fiction, and Fourteen Hills. Her manuscript Fortune's Fools, won Second Prize in Amazon's 2012 Breakthrough Novel Award. She grew up in Taiwan, moved to Seattle at age 16, and studied English literature at Harvard College.

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title
An Excess Male
fullDescription

From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classics The Handmaid's Tale and When She Woke.

Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son. Now 40 million of them can't find wives.

China's One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own. An Excess Male is one such leftover man's quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.

Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small business, and in turn, his country, his chance at love will come. He finally saves up the dowry required to enter matchmaking talks at the lowest rung as a third husband—the maximum allowed by law. Only a single family—one harboring an illegal spouse—shows interest, yet with May-ling and her two husbands, Wei-guo feels seen, heard, and connected to like never before. But everyone and everything—walls, streetlights, garbage cans—are listening, and men, excess or not, are dispensable to the State. Wei-guo must reach a new understanding of patriotism and test the limits of his love and his resolve in order to save himself and this family he has come to hold dear.

In Maggie Shen King's startling and beautiful debut, An Excess Male looks to explore the intersection of marriage, family, gender, and state in an all-too-plausible future.

reviews
      • premium: True
      • source: Publisher's Weekly
      • content:

        July 10, 2017
        In King’s thoughtful, heartbreaking debut, set in near-future Beijing, China’s one-child policy and cultural preference for boys have led to 40 million more men than women. Wei-guo, in his early 40s, is hoping to become part of a polyandrous “advanced family” while navigating a stifling society that considers him unnecessary. Leading his team at Strategic Games is no longer entirely fulfilling; he’s ready to fall in love. He’s thrilled to be matched with a family made up of the big, brash Hann; the socially awkward, brilliant Xiong-xin, aka XX; and, most importantly, the lovely May-ling. The narrative toggles among the main characters, offering insight into each. May-ling is overwhelmed by their rambunctious toddler son, BeiBei, and in love with Hann, even though he is secretly gay, or “willfully sterile.” XX and May-ling don’t really want to be married to each other. A scary twist in the third act keeps the pages turning. King expertly explores the myriad routes to family, hope, and love in a repressive country. Agent: David Fugate, LaunchBooks Literary.

      • premium: True
      • source: Library Journal
      • content:

        August 1, 2017

        Lee Wei-guo is one of the generation of Chinese men known as "the bounty," created by China's one-child policy and the longstanding preference in that culture for male children. Now there are 40 million men unable to find mates. A common solution is for women to take multiple husbands, and Wei-guo is hoping to wed May-ling, who is already married to brothers Hann and Xiong-xin. As Wei-guo and his matchmaker lobby hard to be chosen by May-ling, he learns more about their unusual family dynamic. This is a believable near-future vision of what could happen with China's growing gender imbalance. The relationships between the brothers and their shared spouse are interesting, although it says something about the desperation of middle-aged men like Wei-guo, that he is willing to take on their many issues in order to become part of a family. VERDICT This dystopian debut doesn't quite maintain momentum for the entire novel, seeming more suited for a short story.--MM

        Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • premium: True
      • source: Kirkus
      • content:

        July 1, 2017
        In her provocative debut, King imagines a world in which China's One Child Policy has created a dystopian future of longing, inequality, and constant surveillance.At 40, Lee Wei-guo is a well-established physical trainer. He's even been "voted one of Beijing's top master personal trainers the last five years in a row by The Worldly Bachelor." Like the other men he knows, Wei-guo longs for the companionship of marriage, but China's One Child Policy and preference for male children has created a future in which it's notoriously difficult--and expensive--for men to marry. Women are allowed to take multiple husbands to try and breed more daughters, an authoritarian State has criminalized homosexuality and mental illness, and men are provided with State-regulated outlets for both pleasure and aggression. But when Wei-guo meets Wu May-ling through an expensive matchmaker, he intuits that she and her Advanced family may be the ticket to his future happiness. Despite his growing connection with May-ling and her two husbands, brothers Hann and XX, Wei-guo's hopes for a straightforward marriage contract are thrown into chaos when a battle in the Strategic Games turns unexpectedly deadly. Can Wei-guo outsmart the State-sponsored violence that has rendered men like him so dispensable? Told in alternating viewpoints, King's novel takes its cues from classic sci-fi dystopias, from The Handmaid's Tale to Ender's Game, to demonstrate the repressive control mechanisms already at work in everyday life. An intelligent, incisive commentary on how love survives--or doesn't--under the heel of the State.

        COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • premium: True
      • source: Booklist
      • content:

        August 1, 2017
        Poisoned by years of a cultural preference for sons, China's Communist government has been forced to reinvent family dynamics to cope with its lack of female citizens. Households are created under contracts and consist of up to three husbands for every one wife. Millions of unmarried men spend their lifetime saving up a dowry to patriotically join or begin a marriage of their own, but even with these new arrangements, strict conservative values remain the norm. Homosexuality and intellectual disability are considered taboo and treated with forced rehabilitation, relationships outside of marriage are illegal, and any form of resistance is met with public humiliation. Despite this extreme pressure, Wei-guo feels destined to join a household as an upstanding, successful citizen at almost any cost. He and his fathers have saved a dowry, but the internal problems plaguing the household Wei-guo is matched with may be too steep a price to pay for marriage. King imagines a frightening reality, in which forced cultural norms run counter to basic human rights, leaving readers exceedingly uncomfortable with its feasibility.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

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shortDescription

From debut author Maggie Shen King, An Excess Male is the chilling dystopian tale of politics, inequality, marriage, love, and rebellion, set in a near-future China, that further explores the themes of the classics The Handmaid's Tale and When She Woke.

Under the One Child Policy, everyone plotted to have a son. Now 40 million of them can't find wives.

China's One Child Policy and its cultural preference for male heirs have created a society overrun by 40 million unmarriageable men. By the year 2030, more than twenty-five percent of men in their late thirties will not have a family of their own. An Excess Male is one such leftover man's quest for love and family under a State that seeks to glorify its past mistakes and impose order through authoritarian measures, reinvigorated Communist ideals, and social engineering.

Wei-guo holds fast to the belief that as long as he continues to improve himself, his small...

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