maya maya maya
 

Please direct all publication inquiries about Maya's novels to her agent, Yfat Reiss, at Foundry Literary + Media

The Swing of Beijing
(2008)

In heady, pre-Olympic Beijing, expatriates enjoy easy money, decadent pleasure and a corrupting freedom from restraint. Against this backdrop, Jordan Welp kills a Chinese peasant in a hit-and-run accident. His journalist girlfriend, Pip Alonzo, is meanwhile being drawn into an affair with Tyler Winger, an older expatriate struggling with unemployment, budding alcoholism and a trans-Pacific divorce. The police confiscate Jordan's passport, provoking him to explore increasingly desperate means of escape. Galvanized by Jordan's callous response to the death he caused, Pip delves into the life of the man Jordan killed. Her investigation takes her from Beijing's art district to its expatriate doping scene, and from the clan of Confucius to rebel Chinese smugglers. What she discovers compels her to confront her decaying relationship with Jordan, her hopes for a future with Tyler, and her capacity to improvise a gratifying life for herself over the challenging baseline Beijing lays down.

Read an excerpt.  

Video Promo for The Swing of Beijing





Waiting for Love Child
(2008)

Dean Cannon is pacing the floor of the maternity ward waiting room at Beijing International Harmony Hospital, waiting for his mistress to birth a baby he's convinced is his. As he paces, he entrusts a seven-hour confessional monologue to an mp3 player, explaining how he came to love his American mistress, Lisa. Neither his gorgeous Chinese wife, Lan, her wealthy parents, nor Dean's adorable son P.J. has been able to restrain his passion for Lisa. Nor, for that matter, have Dean's sessions with his drama therapist, Sandra—to whom the monologue is addressed—succeeded in redirecting his wayward impulses. As Dean recounts his hilarious history—the My Ding-a-Ling wedding song, the honeymoon at Harvard, the drama therapy production of Waiting for Godot performed by migrant workers, as well as Dean's obsession with Lan's bi-sexual inclinations—events outside his scope of vision are coalescing to place him on a collision course with his sanity.

Read an excerpt.



Portnoy's Daughter
(2006)

This sexually-explicit parody of Philip Roth's 1967 classic, Portnoy's Complaint, finds Chastity Portnoy, Alexander's adopted daughter, facing a crisis. She's a lawyer, but she wants to be a writer, and her novelist fiancé, Philip Broth, has just criticized her first manuscript. In a fit of pique, she cheats on him with one of her co-workers, just before heading off for a weekend with her father—who, upon Chastity's arrival in Connecticut, is exhuming his mother's grave. The start proves prophetic for a weekend in which Chastity will meet her biological mother, find a bride gone missing from a wedding, procure a prostitute for her still-randy father, stand up to a sexual harasser at work, and ultimately confront her fiancé about her infidelity in an attempt to salvage their relationship.

Read an excerpt.


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