When Sleeping Women Wake: Emma Pei Yin in-conversation with Alli Parker

An epic and emotional story of three spirited women - a mother, her daughter, their maid - during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.

1941. The wealthy Tang family has settled in Hong Kong after fleeing Shanghai. As the First Wife of the family, Mingzhu leads a glamorous but lonely existence - mothering the son of her husband's concubine, overseeing her daughter Qiang's education, and directing their household of servants, including her long-time confidante, Biyu.

When the Japanese invade the island, the three women's paths wildly diverge. Mingzhu's affinity for languages spares her physical labour but she's coerced into serving an enemy captain. Qiang and Biyu suffer brutal factory work and food rations until an encounter with the East River Column Resistance fighters separates them. As war rages around them, each woman holds onto the hope that the others are alive. Can they fight for their freedom and still find their way back to each other?

Fans of Lisa See, Kristin Hannah and Anthony Doerr, storytellers who blend historical accuracy with personal narrative, will love this book. Through years of impeccable research, Australian-Chinese novelist Emma Pei Yin breathes new life into real events. At once monumental and intimate, heartbreaking and hopeful, When Sleeping Women Wake is an exquisitely written novel about the unbreakable bonds that unite women.

Emma Pei Yin is an Australian-Hong Kong Chinese writer and editor. Her work has been featured in publications such as Mekong Review, Being Asian Australian, HerCanberra, Aniko Press, The Hong Kong Review and Books+Publishing. In 2023, BookPeople and Penguin Random House Australia nominated her as Bookseller of the Year. That same year, her manuscript, Chasing Echoes in the Rain, was shortlisted for the Allen & Unwin Voices from the Intersection Mentorship Programme. She lives and works on Ngunnawal Country with her partner and their extremely barky dachshund, Lady. When Sleeping Women Wake is her first novel.

Alli Parker is a Japanese-Australian author and screenwriter who lives on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. She has written episodes of Jack Irish, Secret Bridesmaids’ Business and Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries, and worked in the script departments of Irreverent, Sunshine and Please Like Me. Her first novel, At the Foot of the Cherry Tree, was published in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year and for Dymocks Book of the Year 2023.