The Hunger We Pass Down
by Jen Sookfong Lee

Erewhon Books is pleased to announce The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee, a literary domestic horror novel arriving in the fall of 2025.

Centering on Alice, a single mother on the brink of falling apart, The Hunger We Pass Down traces the inherited curses of four generations of mothers and daughters through the lens of both history and mythology.

Author Jen Sookfong Lee says, “The Hunger We Pass Down is a novel that speaks to the fears and anxieties of our contemporary world, while excavating the intergenerational traumas of our ancestors. When I set out to write a horror story that featured a tired, messy single mother and the demonic myths of her family's past, I knew it would take a really special team to shepherd this book into the world. I am so fortunate to be working with Viengsamai Fetters at Erewhon Books and Anita Chong at McClelland & Stewart, two editors who truly understand the joy in writing (and reading!) the creepy and the inexplicable.”

Editor Viengsamai Fetters added, “Unsettling and incisive, The Hunger We Pass Down is an unflinchingly honest intergenerational haunting—I read this in one sitting and set it down feeling utterly carved out inside. From Alice’s daughter Luna to her great-grandmother Gigi, who was a comfort woman in Hong Kong during WWII, Jen Sookfong Lee has woven a brilliantly precise and disturbing story that’s perfect for readers who loved A School for Good Mothers and Jordan Peele’s Us.”

More on The Hunger We Pass Down below:

Single mother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online cloth diaper shop, her resentful teenage daughter Luna, and her screen-obsessed son Luca, Alice can never get everything done in a day. It’s all she can do to just collapse on the couch with a bottle of wine every night.

It’s a relief when Alice wakes up one morning and everything has been done. The counters are clear, the kids’ rooms are tidy, orders are neatly packed and labeled. But no one confesses they’ve helped, and Alice doesn’t remember staying up late. As the pattern continues, it seems that either Alice has developed a rigorous cleaning habit while blacked out, or someone–or something–has been doing her chores for her. Alice should be uneasy, but the extra time lets her connect with her children and with her hard-edged mother, Judy, who begins to open up about their family history–so there can’t possibly be anything to complain about.

But as old hurts fester, Alice and her family are left to contend with the unresolved demons—both real and imagined—that emerge from their personal and collective shadows. Threaded with the myths of the Asian diaspora against the gleaming backdrop of contemporary Vancouver, The Hunger We Pass Down exposes the fears we all carry, but desperately wish we could forget.

JEN SOOKFONG LEE was born and raised in Vancouver’s East Side, and she now lives with her family in North Burnaby. Her books include the memoir Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart; The Conjoined: A Novel, nominated for International Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize; The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award; The End of East; The Shadow List; and Finding Home. Jen was, for many years, an instructor for Simon Fraser University’s The Writers’ Studio as well as a familiar voice on CBC Radio, and now acquires for ECW Press and co-hosts the literary podcast, Can’t Lit.

Cover reveal and preorder links to come soon!