The Chosen and the Beautiful

Immigrant. Magician. Socialite. The American immigrant narrative that Gatsby always should have been.

“Gatsby the way it should have been written—dark, dazzling, fantastical.” —R. F. Kuang

“Luxurious, thrilling, and sexy.” —Adrienne Celt

Immigrant. Socialite. Magician.

Jordan Baker grows up in the most rarefied circles of 1920s American society—she has money, education, a killer golf handicap, and invitations to some of the most exclusive parties of the Jazz Age. She’s also queer and Asian, a Vietnamese adoptee treated as an exotic attraction by her peers, while the most important doors remain closed to her.

But the world is full of wonders: infernal pacts and dazzling illusions, lost ghosts and elemental mysteries. In all paper is fire, and Jordan can burn the cut paper heart out of a man. She just has to learn how.

Nghi Vo’s debut novel The Chosen and the Beautiful reinvents this classic of the American canon as a coming-of-age story full of magic, mystery, and glittering excess, and introduces a major new literary voice.
This debut novel, where the new gods are ready to devour the old, is rich with the literary magical realism of The Paper Menagerie and introduces a major new crossover voice.