Souvankham Thammavongsa

From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labor, and class, an intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the privileged clients who don't even know her true name.

In the title story of Souvankham Thammavongsa's debut collection, a young girl brings a book home from school and asks her father to help her pronounce a tricky word, a simple exchange with unforgettable consequences....

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER FINALIST FOR THE 2025 GILLER PRIZE From Giller Prize and O. Henry Award winner Souvankham Thammavongsa comes a revelatory novel about loneliness, love, labour, and class. An intimate and sharply written book following a nail salon owner as she toils away for the...

Ning is a retired boxer, but to the customers who visit her nail salon, she is just another worker named Susan. On this summer's day, much like any other, the Susans buff and clip and polish and tweeze. They listen and smile and nod.

A young man painting nails at the local salon. A woman plucking feathers at a chicken processing plant. A father who packs furniture to move into homes he'll never afford. A housewife learning English from daytime soap operas....

A single rose bush in a courtyard serves as the centerpiece for a sequence of stories of vastly different lives with unexpected connections....

A beautiful re-issued edition of poetry from the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning author of How To Pronounce Knife....

Souvankham Thammavongsa’s third book of poetry, originally published in 2013, Light examines the word that gives the collection its name....

Reminiscent of Pablo Neruda's Elemental Odes, Small Arguments, originally published in 2003, is the stunningly original debut by a gifted poet....

An ex-boxer turned nail salon worker falls for a pair of immaculate hands, a mother and daughter harvest earthworms in the middle of the night, a country-music-obsessed housewife abandons her family for fantasy and a young girl's love for her father transcends language....