The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu

Winner of the Carnegie Medal for ExcellenceFinalist for the Young Lions Fiction AwardOrphaned young, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life. Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoon's henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Central Pacific Railroad.Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant known only as the prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed Ming, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey. Ming blazes his way across the West, settling old scores with a single-minded devotion that culminates in an explosive and unexpected finale.Written with the violent ardor of Cormac McCarthy and the otherworldly inventiveness of Ted Chiang, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is at once a thriller, a romance, and a story of one man's quest for redemption in the face of a distinctly American brutality."In Tom Lin's novel, the atmosphere of Cormac McCarthy's West, or that of the Coen Brothers' True Grit, gives way to the phantasmagorical shades of Ray Bradbury, Charles Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao, and Katherine Dunn's Geek Love. Yet The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu has a velocity and perspective all its own, and is a fierce new version of the Westward Dream." -Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

"Lin displays remarkable skill in maneuvering his plot and characters... Ming is a unique figure. He's a murderer with a strange personal code... but he's also a score-settling outlaw worthy of True Grit... This is a major work that enlarges our view of the Wild West and marks Lin as a writer to watch."--BookPage (starred review), "The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu whips through brutal American West landscapes and breathless battles as we follow Ming on his cinematic quest for justice."--Sacramento Bee, "A rollicking gallery of Western archetypes."--Los Angeles Times (Best Books of Summer 2021), "A western gothic revenge tale ripe for a Coen brothers adaptation."--Boston Globe, "Eminently entertaining... There's a lot to love in this expansive debut novel from Tom Lin. The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is a truly cinematic Western. Its vistas and action sequences are perfectly designed for fans of graphic novels and the big screen alike. Similarly, the body count is crafted for an audience that enjoys adrenaline's pulse in its ears. Lin's wordcraft is deft and painterly, whether he's describing a fight scene or a desert... an important, vivid story, with characters led through the landscape by the demands of its plot... I hope we see more of all these stories from Tom Lin in the future."--NPR.org

Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he is currently in the PhD program at the University of California, Davis. This is his first novel.