Acclaimed author Katherine Min passed away in 2019. Her stellar literary career included a Pushcart Prize, an NEA grant, the Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fiction Award and many other accolades and awards, including residencies with MacDowell and Yaddo. Her debut novel, Secondhand World, received enviable praise and was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize.
After Katherine Min’s death, her daughter, Kayla Min Andrews, inherited her laptop—and files that would eventually become the published book The Fetishist.
Collated and completed after the author's untimely death, the novel is provocative, hilarious, and darkly serious.
It tells the story of three people. Kyoko, a young singer in a punk rock band who seeks to channel her anger and sorrow after her mother’s death. Daniel is a hapless man who is grappling with the failings of his past—in matters of love and career. Alma had once been in a romantic relationship with Daniel. She had always been admired for her beauty and her talent but now she has a terminal illness.
The novel addresses issues of sexual politics and the fetishization of Asian women.
It’s also about many other things and is compelling, funny, and intelligent—exploring themes of art, sex, love, and grief.
Kayla Min Andrews helped guide those laptop files to a new life as this second book by Katherine Min.
Katherine Min is the author of the posthumously published novel The Fetishist. Her acclaimed debut novel, Secondhand World, was a finalist for the Pen-Bingham Award in 2007.
Kayla Min Andrews is the daughter of Katherine Min. She is a biracial Korean American writer living in New Orleans. She has a piece forthcoming from The Massachusetts Review and has been published in Cagibi, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Asymptote. Her flash essay “Old Kleenex” was nominated for a Best of the Net 2020. Kayla assisted Putnam on the posthumous publication of her mother’s novel The Fetishist, including editing the manuscript and writing the afterword. Kayla is an MFA candidate in fiction at Randolph and is working on a novel.
