Counterfeit

by Kirstin Chen

Borough Press

A book about handbags – whats not to love?!  So, if you know your Birkin from your Selleria, if Louis-Vuitton and Prada excite you, this book’s for you!

Ava Wong is a strait-laced, hard-working, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home – she’s done everything right, she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava’s world is crumbling…

Winnie Fang is Ava’s enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out of both college and Ava’s life under highly mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business – someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava…

Swift, surprising, and sharply comic, Counterfeit is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.

A con artist story, a pop-feminist caper, a fashionable romp . . . Counterfeit is an entertaining, luxurious read—but beneath its glitz and flash, it is also a shrewd deconstruction of the American dream and the myth of the model minority. . . . Chen is up to something innovative and subversive here. – The New York Times

A startling, gleeful look at the American Dream and what counts as real in a world obsessed with image – The Washington Post

If you appreciate a good caper, you’ll want to pick up Kirstin Chen’s novel about two Asian American women who turn a counterfeit handbag scheme into a big business. The book is written as a confession, which helps readers get to know protagonists Ava and Winnie, and how their lives detoured toward crime. Counterfeit is fast-paced and fun, with smart commentary on the cultural differences between Asia and America. – Time magazine, Best Books of Summer 2022

Propulsive and captivating . . . A provocative story of fashion, friendship, and fakes (in more ways than one), with characters that both subvert and capitalize on the model-minority myth. No surprise that the sly feminist caper was the subject of a fierce eight-way bidding war for TV rights. – Vogue, The Best Books of 2022