Michelle See-Tho - Jade and Emerald

Jade and Emerald is a fierce and deeply felt novel about the joys and pains of growing up, of accepting who you are and where you come from.

Lei Ling Wen is lonely. Bored of her demanding after-school schedule of tuition, study and violin lessons, she struggles to see eye to eye with her strict Chinese-Malaysian mother.

When Lei Ling is befriended by elegant, worldly socialite Gigi Nu, she is enchanted by the realm of luxury and freedom that suddenly opens up to her. Gigi encourages Lei Ling to flout her routines and treats her to designer products and expensive meals, and soon Lei Ling finds herself caught between two lives, and increasingly at odds with her exasperated mother.

Then tragedy strikes, and Lei Ling discovers long-held secrets that lead her to question everything she thought she knew about the two central women in her life, and the friendship she’d held at the heart of it.

Jade and Emerald is a fierce and deeply felt novel about the joys and pains of growing up, of accepting who you are and where you come from.

Winner of the 2023 Penguin Literary Prize, Michelle See-Tho is a freelance writer and copywriter. She has had articles and stories published in Kill Your Darlings, Meanjin, Overland and The Big Issue Fiction Edition. Jade and Emerald is her first novel.

This in conversation event has been organised in partnership with The Book Bird.

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