The empress of salt and fortune (2020)

A cleric records an old servant's memories through the objects around her. Nghi Vo makes that small act of listening revise an empire's account of its own history. The pleasure is in how a domestic detail can acquire political force, with much left for the reader to connect. A concentrated choice about who gets to preserve the past. It opens the Singing Hills Cycle, whose linked novellas can be read in any order.