Nothing to My Name

A powerful tale of trauma impacting women told across three generations * Grazia *
Lyrical, haunting and profoundly moving, Nothing to My Name is a story of survival, identity and the fragile hope that passes from mother to daughter * Jean Kwok *
Kangkang Li Kovacs deftly shows us how a culture grows and shape-shifts, remains in stasis, and eats its tail. Still, the ink of activism seems only to gather legibly in the wake of change, reminding readers that resistance can appear unremarkable before it kindles revolution. Nothing to My Name lives honestly in its history – foolhardy and loving and yet uncharted. A formidable and astonishing new voice * T. Kira Madden *
With deep empathy, and with luminous and memorable detail, Kovacs reveals the fragility and resilience of three generations of women grappling with social and cultural upheaval, and the precarity of their lives. Nothing to My Name is at once intimate and epic, sweeping readers along a gripping story of family bonds, redemption, and triumph. A masterful debut! * Marcela Fuentes *
Survival is an instinct. But with grace and courage it can be transformed into triumph. Kangkang Li Kovacs shows us how as she conjures each moment, memory and observation with poignancy and tenderness * Kerry Young *
The language and imagery are vivid and beautiful, but it doesn’t hide the harsh hand that life deals… A wonderful debut novel that is based on the author’s family history * Good Reading Magazine *
At times poetic, remarkably balanced, and unflinching, it is a tale of survival by ordinary women and her own background and talent as a writer, means Kangkang Li Kovacs has produced a book both highly significant and memorable * Queensland Reviewers Collective *
A series of wonderful set pieces, beautiful, inspiring and sometimes horrifying, some specific to the experience of girls and women in later 20th-century China and others reflecting the universal human experience * Historical Novel Society *
Kovacs’s first English novel is a remarkable achievement, giving us some inside knowledge about the impact of these significant events in China’s recent history * Otago Daily *

Kangkang Li Kovacs grew up in Nanchang, China and came to the United States for her graduate studies. After earning a PhD in nuclear physics at the University of Virginia and teaching math and physics at UC Santa Barbara, Kovacs decided to pursue her passion for writing. She received her M.F.A. at the College of Charleston. Her writing has been published in Jellyfish Review and swamp pink literary magazine, among other outlets. Nothing to My Name is her first novel.

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