Nothing to My Name by Kangkang Li Kovacs

1948, Zhoushan, China. Twelve-year-old Ah Xue watches her mother earn a living combing the hair of the wealthy women in their small fishing village, as reports of civil war and the rising Communist revolution grow closer to home.

Years later, Mimosa grows up in the shadow of her parents’ struggles, while the looming tension of the Cultural Revolution threatens to pull her family apart.

And Fei, raised as a boy by the activist father she can’t help but idolise, grapples with her identity in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

Spanning four decades and three generations, Nothing to My Name braids an unforgettable story of the ordinary women caught in the tides of societal upheaval, but bound by an insuppressible instinct to survive. From an astonishing new writer, it explores with remarkable tenderness the enduring repercussions of trauma, the search for stability in disorder, and the often contradictory nature of familial love.

A sweeping, multi-generational family saga that explores how women survive the tsunamis of history

About the Author: Kangkang Li Kovacs grew up in Nanchang, China and came to the United States for her graduate studies. After earning a PhD in nuclear physics at the University of Virginia and teaching math and physics at UC Santa Barbara, Kovacs decided to pursue her passion for writing. She received her M.F.A. at the College of Charleston. Her writing has been published in Jellyfish Review and swamp pink literary magazine, among other outlets. Nothing to My Name is her first novel.

23 Jun 2026
 

Nothing to My Name by Kangkang Li Kovacs ISBN 9781526687289