Little Gods

Little Gods (2020) is a literary mystery and work of historical fiction by Meng Jin focusing on the events leading up to and during the protest at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. Despite the heightened cultural moment at the center of the novel, the focus is on Liya’s struggle to discover the events that happened on the day of her birth and the whereabouts of her biological father. Liya travels to Beijing after her mother, Su Luan's death, to try to uncover her origin story. Her search focuses on three main characters—her mother, Su Luan, and her two rival lovers, Zhang Bo and Li Yongzong.

The novel opens on June 4, 1989, in Beijing, China—the day police massacred protesters in Tiananmen Square, and the day Su Luan gave birth to her only child, Liya. During the birth, Su Luan wondered where her husband could be. She worried that like so many others, he was rounded up and killed by the police. With the fate of her husband unknown, Su Luan brought her daughter into the world. After that day, she went to great pains to conceal the story of Liya's birth from her daughter.

Born in Beijing, Liya was raised primarily in the United States. She is the only child of her mother, Su Luan, a secretive and brilliant single parent, who moved her family to the United States so she could study physics. When the novel begins, Su Luan is recently deceased. Liya is concerned that her mother took the secret of Liya’s birth with her to the grave. Wanting to know the identity of her father and what happened on the day she was born, Liya travels back to China to deliver her mother's ashes to her native land, and to find out the truth about her mother's young life, and her own birth.



The story of Su Luan's life, before and after the birth of Liya is told by five different narrators, all of whom speak to Liya about her mother's brilliance, her ambition, and the secrets she wanted to keep from her child. As Liya begins to investigate her mother and the story of her own birth, she finds that Su Luan changed her birth year, to avoid suspicion; she was afraid to say that her child was born on the day of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

Though Liya is trying to discover her own story, much of the novel focuses on her mother. Liya learns about her mother's complicated relationships with two high school sweethearts, Zhang Bo and Li Yongzong. Liya's investigation reveals the personalities of these young men, who vied for her mother's love and affection, and the personality and preoccupations of her mother, who was most invested in her own success. Zhu Wen, a woman who knew Su Luan for many years before she left China, narrates most of this part of the story. The other narrator, Li Yongzong, who claims to be Liya's estranged father though Liya had never met him. Beginning with the love triangle that hides the true nature of Liya's birth, the story then moves into Su Luan's ambitions as a physicist, and her desire to change the way we conceive of time.

Using an interplay of narrators, Meng Jin conceals the mystery of Liya's birth and Su Luan's life until the very end of the novel, when the strands of secrets are brought together to reveal a strange and heartfelt history. Ultimately, the book is less about the mystery which drives the plot, and more about Su Luan, a woman with drive, passion, and a deep love for the universe and its mysterious laws.



Educated at Harvard and Hunter College, Chinese American author Meng Jin was raised in San Francisco and Shanghai. A Kundiman Fellow, Little Gods, her first book, received much critical acclaim from NPR, The Washington Post, and others and was named a Best Book by a number of media outlets, including Vogue, USA Today, TIME, Electric Literature, Bustle, PureWow, The Millions, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Mary Sue.