At Hana Chen's community diner, no guest ever goes hungry in this delicious and heartwarming novel about food and found family
Amid a food shortage in post-WWII Borneo, hidden away in a back alley near Carpenter Street is an unnamed diner run by Hana Chen. Hana's customers must bring their own ingredients - enough to feed five people - for her to cook from 6.30pm to midnight. There is no menu, and payment is always refused. For her customers, the diner is not just a place for meals. It is a refuge from a world teeming with distrust after the Japanese Occupation, somewhere to seek relief from loss, trauma and grief.
Hana provides a seemingly endless supply of rice, a commodity more precious than gold. Cooking with the ancient donabe, the Japanese earthenware cooking pot left by her mother, Hana whispers a prayer for abundance, and the donabe never fails to produce enough rice for anyone who walks in, despite the handful of grains Hana sprinkles into it.
Estranged from her wealthy Chinese father, and with her mother repatriated to Japan, Hana likes to keep people at arm's length: she listens to their stories but says little about herself. Until her heart is softened by Kim Choo, a little girl who is the star of the Carpenter Street opera troupe - and ruled over by a cruel master.
As Hana begins to trust in the community around her, her life is upended, forcing her to reconsider the ghosts of her past, as she finds her own identity in a post-war world. But when a great flood causes untold destruction, Hana is reminded there are many who care about her, and there will always be a place for food and sanctuary in the diner - this time for Hana too.
