Surreal and seductive – brimming with moths, myths and mothers, nine-headed birds, ghost cousins and storm-chasers – Gods of Want is a startling first collection of short stories from a rising talent.

In ‘Auntland’, a stream of aunts adjust to American life by sneaking kisses from women at temple and buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prep for citizenship tests. In ‘The Chorus of Dead Cousins’, ghost cousins cross space, seas and skies to haunt their living cousin. In ‘Xif ’, a mother-in-law tortures a wife in increasingly unsuccessful attempts to oust her. In ‘Mariela’, two girls explore each other’s bodies for the first time in the belly of a plastic shark. And in ‘Resident Aliens’, a series of mysterious widows, each harbouring a calamitous secret, make their home in a former slaughterhouse.

K-Ming Chang’s storytelling is fierce, fabulist and feminist. In these uncanny tales, she delves into myth and memory, corporeality and ghostliness, queerness and the quotidian, with boundless imagination.