Tor Books is thrilled to announce the acquisition, at auction, of North American rights for When They Burned the Butterfly and an additional novel from The Dark We Know author Wen-yi Lee by Ruoxi Chen with Sanaa Ali-Virani editing. Isabel Kaufman at Fox Literary brokered the deal.
Read on to learn more, and for an exclusive excerpt from When They Burned the Butterfly!
Wen-yi Lee’s fierce, glamorous adult debut reads like Silvia Moreno-Garcia meets Fonda Lee, with the feverish intensity of R. F. Kuang’s Poppy War trilogy.
Singapore, 1972: Newly independent, a city of immigrants grappling for power in a fast-modernizing world. Here, gangsters are the last conduits of the gods their ancestors brought with them, and the back alleys where they fight are the last place where magic has not been assimilated and legislated away.
Loner schoolgirl Adeline Siow has never needed more company than the flame she can summon at her fingertips. But when her mother dies in a house fire with a butterfly seared onto her skin and Adeline hunts down a girl she saw in a back-alley bar fight—a girl with a butterfly tattoo—she discovers she’s far from alone.
Ang Tian is a Red Butterfly: one of a gang of girls who came from nothing, sworn to a fire goddess and empowered to wreak vengeance on the men that abuse and underestimate them. Adeline’s mother led a double life as their elusive patron, Madam Butterfly. Now that she’s dead, Adeline’s bloodline is the sole thing sustaining the goddess. Between her search for her mother’s killer and the gang’s succession crisis, Adeline becomes quickly entangled with the girls’ dangerous world, and even more so with the charismatic Tian.
But no home lasts long around here. Ambitious and paranoid neighbor gangs hunt at the edges of Butterfly territory, and bodies are turning up in the red light district suffused with a strange new magic. Adeline may have found her place for once, but with the streets changing by the day, it may take everything she is to keep it.
The author, Wen-yi Lee, said of the book and acquisition:
“I looked for a while for the story about home I wanted to write—this is likely not the last, but I’m violently thrilled it’s the first. It’s also not just mine, but my parents’ and grandparents’ newly-independent Singapore, a version that doesn’t quite exist anymore. The characters are coming of age alongside the nation, gaining and losing in measures. When They Burned the Butterfly is a nod to changing landscapes, identity, young women and queer people in history, the bodies that build a city, the early immigrant Chinese communities and secret societies; it’s about slightly problematic, destructive girls whose religion is maybe each other? I drew from real history, but these girls’ gods are really of my (and their) own making! I’m thrilled to be putting this out in the world with a dream publisher like Tor.”
Agent Isabel Kaufman added:
“This book took my breath away at first read—a cinematic speculative love letter to a piece of Singapore’s history that comes alive on the page. It is a gorgeous scorching story and a declaration from a stunningly assured new voice of what defines her work: difficult girls, vivid sense of place, and a beating (and burning) queer heart. I cannot think of a better project to introduce Wen-yi Lee to her adult audience.”
Of the acquisition, editor Sanaa Ali-Virani remarked:
“When They Burned the Butterfly is a truly special book. The way Lee interweaves themes of belonging and postcolonialism with blazing magic born from girls and gods who make their power felt is masterful—and exactly the sort of heady mixture I love in a book. I and the rest of the team at Tor can’t wait to put this enthralling story into the hands of readers.”
Wen-yi Lee likes writing about girls with bite, feral nature, and ghosts. Born and based in Singapore and a graduate of University College London, she is also the author of YA horror The Dark We Know, and has published short fiction in venues like Lightspeed, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, and various anthologies. When They Burned The Butterfly is her adult debut about a different side of home. Find her on socials @wenyilee_ and otherwise at her website.
The White Orchid turned out to be a cabaret club; three girls in tight, sparkling dresses were doing a sultry number as more weaved through the dimmed floor serving drinks and chatting to customers. Adeline made her way to the bar, letting the destination give her an excuse to scan the room. The girls’ dresses looked as cheap as the customers—watches, shirts—but people were here to spend, nonetheless.
An anonymous hand grazed her thigh as she passed and she fantasized, again, about setting a bitch on fire. She rubbed her thumb over her fingerpads, but let it go. Too many witnesses, her mother would flay her, and fires were too dangerous in dense places like this, buildings and bodies packed shoulder to shoulder. One spark was how tragedies began.
Adeline propped herself at the bar and ordered a Tiger beer with the cash already extended. The bartender gave her a shrewd glance, but turned away without statement. Low lights, confidence, and getting dolled up had yet to lead her wrong. This wasn’t the discos at the Shangri-La or the Mandarin, where the authorities kept closer watch and the clientele were more legitimate. Places like these wanted more girls in them. The managers wouldn’t look closely until the police came knocking.
The bartender stopped to speak with someone further down the counter, and that was when Adeline noticed the girl slanted against the bar.
She wore a white cotton singlet tucked into loose jeans, and the curve of the straps drew the eye to the lean arms she propped on the counter and the tattoos that curled up them. She couldn’t be much older than Adeline, but dark shapes spiraled over her biceps and disappeared beneath her shirt. She had tousled hair to her shoulders, which fell over her face as she tipped her head to drop a remark in the bartender’s ear and make him grin. Definitely a regular, but she was also here alone. Not a usual combination, for a girl. A thick copper ring sat on her right hand; Adeline almost wondered if it was a wedding ring before realizing it was on her third finger, not her fourth.
The bartender set down Adeline’s bottle and change with a clink. “Are you Ah Poh?” she asked casually, as he prised off the cap.
A sharp pop and a hiss. “Ah Poh’s the boss. He’s not in tonight.”
So she was in the right place. That didn’t clear much up.
Avoiding too much attention from the bartender, Adeline found herself a table in a dingy corner and sipped the sweating beer while scanning the room. Now, who here could her mother possibly know? Even if Ah Poh wasn’t here tonight, her mother’s mysterious contact would likely still be coming in. She scanned for other watchful loners and then eavesdropped on the tables around her, but it was hard to pick up anything under the music. Her attentions turned between the performers, who wore the shining sheens of their efforts under the lights, and the girl at the bar, who was watching them. St. Mary’s would have called the police on her at the gate. Adeline couldn’t stop looking at her. Some gangster’s girlfriend, she supposed, but couldn’t quite convince herself of it.
Twenty minutes passed without a sign of anything unusual. The cabaret set ended and the house lights went up a shade, with the emcee promising the next set in fifteen minutes. He had an eyebrow-wiggling sort of tone; judging by some of the cheers, the next set was a little more salacious.
The lights let Adeline take in the room better: faded white floral wallpaper, faux art deco on the bar. It was all much more interesting when you couldn’t see half of it. She noticed the tattooed girl had vanished.
But closer to her, there was a tussle happening. One of the young men at the nearby table had grabbed one of the performers as she left the stage. His friends were calling out, trying to persuade her to sit and sing for them.
The girl was trying to bat him away with fake laughs, but his grip only tightened. “Don’t be like that, chiobu. Your job is to entertain us, isn’t it? Then sing for us, come on.”
The men were near enough for Adeline to touch. Their table was littered with bottles and glasses—she could smell the alcohol coming off of them. One touch was all it would take to light. But witnesses, mother, tragedy—she was fantasizing about smashing the bottle into the man’s head instead when a hand came down hard on his wrist.
The man swore. The cabaret girl scampered out of his reach. He sprung up, cradling his hand, and Adeline saw that five puncture wounds had suddenly opened up on his skin in a tight circle, as though a creature had latched on to bite.
The man wheeled around to the tattooed girl standing in front of him, twisting her ring thoughtfully. It had prongs, but no stone attached—the five hooks had been pried straight to form a mouth of spikes, and this was what the girl had slammed into the man’s wrist.
“You know the rules, Peng,” she said in Hokkien. “You don’t screw around with the performers. Now leave.”
“Don’t touch then don’t touch. We paid to be here, we’re not going anywhere.” Peng paused for support, but his friends remained warily silent. Something about the girl had spooked them. Undaunted, the man made a rude gesture at the girl and turned to sit back down.
He didn’t get that far. The tattooed girl grabbed his wrist. The next second glass shattered, leaping off the shaking table as the girl wrenched his arm behind him. He struggled, but he was clearly inebriated and the girl had twisted her ring around so it pressed right into his spine. She glared down at his friends. “Get out!”
The chairs scraped in the flurry of leaving, glass crunching under heavy soles, but Adeline wasn’t watching them go. The girl was muttering in Peng’s ear. Her free hand was angled under his chin, like she was holding a knife. But instead of a knife, there was a flame, just big enough to dance off her fingertip and onto his Adam’s apple.
Adeline had never before been breathless.
The girl finally let Peng up, yanking him to his feet and shoving him away. He stumbled, touching his wet cheek where he’d gone face-first onto the glasses.
This time, he didn’t need to be told to leave. The girl folded her arms as he stomped away, face bleeding profusely. At the threshold he spat on the floor. “Butterfly,” he sneered, loud enough for the bar to hear, and then rushed through the door before the girl could start after him.
After a moment’s uncertainty, the chatter started back up again. As the bubble shrank back to just the two of them, Adeline met the girl’s eyes, and felt a thrill.
Excerpted from When They Burned the Butterfly, copyright © 2024 by Wen-yi Lee.
