Tom Lin + Mark Krotov: Babylon, South Dakota

Publisher of n+1, Mark Krotov, will join him in conversation.

This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

ACCESSIBILITY:

Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator.

ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by May 22 to request.

Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.

For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact [email protected]

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From the author of the Carnegie Medal in Fiction winner The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu comes a tantalizing, American West saga about a Chinese American family trying to survive on their Dakota farm as a powerful, mysterious, and morally dubious military secret shapes their lives.

"Lin's gossamer prose is patient and full of wonders."—Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams and An Oral History of Atlantis

When Saul Keng Hsiu and his wife, Mei Lee, move from China to the United States to take possession of a 160-acre homestead bequeathed to them by a distant relative, all they have are the possessions on their back, some hidden gold, and a pocketful of chrysanthemum seeds. After a rocky start and a long, harsh winter, the couple find themselves successfully raising chrysanthemums and livestock, and soon after, a daughter, Mara.

But when representatives from the US Army Corps of Engineers buy an acre of the Hsiu’s farmland and begin building a missile silo, the inexplicable starts to occur: Mara can commune with the animals on the farm, Mei develops a hidden talent for augury, and the chrysanthemums become impervious to everything. When the Hsius learn that the project on their farm is an effort to make America’s nuclear deterrent invulnerable, they see firsthand the long arm of power and empire.

In the years and generations that follow, increasingly impacted by the silo and its residue, the Hsius experience strange, wondrous, and tragic events on their farm. An ambitious epic and an ode to the beauty and glory of our connection to the natural world, Babylon, South Dakota upends the idea of "strangers in a strange land" to become a classic American story. It is a daring novel about how choices reverberate across generations and asks us what we owe to one another.
TIME Magazine's Most Anticipated Books of the Year, Town & Country's Best Books of Spring 2026, New York Times Book Review's 32 Novels We're Excited About This Spring, The Spokesman Review's 12 upcoming books we're excited to read

Photo credit: Riel Sturchio

Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he also holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis. His first novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. He teaches English and creative writing at the University of Iowa.

Mark Krotov is the coeditorand publisherof n+1 and the coeditor of TheIntellectualSituation (n+1 Books, 2024).

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