Esmé Weijun Wang‘s novel The Border of Paradise begins in familiar territory and rapidly ventures into the uncharted. It opens with the story of David Nowak, the scion of a prosperous Polish-American family in post-World War II Brooklyn struggling with conflicts familial and internal–but soon the narrative expands to include the stories of others, including his wife Jia-Hui and their children. The plot gradually shifts into bleaker and stranger places, and the result is a novel that pushes past the tropes of traditional stories to arrive at something more unpredictable and revelatory. I spoke with Wang to learn more about the novel’s structure, its evolution over time, and its inventive use of language.
