Fixer Chao

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • A cult classic and Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, this sharp, insightful novel by New Yorker contributor Han Ong explores racial and social hierarchy, personal identity, and alienation.

William Paulinha—a resourceful gay Filipino sex worker barely getting by in New York—is determined to turn his life around when he crosses paths with Shem C., an on-the-rise author now disgraced and exiled from both his marriage and the city’s literary inner circle. Furious at the world that cast him out, Shem finds in the intelligent and pliable William the perfect accomplice for his plans.

Under Shem’s tutelage, William reinvents himself as “Master Chao,” an enigmatic Feng Shui consultant catering to New York’s wealthiest and most self-satisfied classes. As doors swing open and fortunes are arranged and rearranged, William is pulled ever deeper into the private anxieties and secret desires of the powerful, discovering just how much people will pay to believe that even their moral rot can be purified and saved.

Blending razor-sharp satire with tenderness and psychological insight, Fixer Chao traces a dazzling ascent built on illusion and audacious transformation. By turns funny, devastating, and electrifying, Ong’s writing asks what it takes to remake oneself in America—and what, if anything, remains when the performance finally ends.

Han Ong has written two novels, Fixer Chao, first published by FSG in 2001, and The Disinherited, published in 2004. His stories are in The New Yorker and Zoetrope: All-Story. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fiction, a fellowship at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin. Fixer Chao was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year in 2001, and The Disinherited was nominated for a LAMBDA Book Award in 2005.