Keep Your Enemies Close, the debut novel by Doris W. Cheng, is a biting, darkly funny exploration of family, identity, and assimilation. Struggling to finish her dissertation, Connie Wang finds herself increasingly resentful of her overbearing Taiwanese immigrant mother and desperate to escape her past. But when her boyfriend suggests cutting ties with her family, Connie begins questioning whether she can ever truly separate herself from where she came from.
Cheng is a Taiwanese American writer and editor whose work has appeared in Boston Review, Shenandoah, and New Orleans Review. She is also the fiction editor of Bellevue Literary Review. Deep Vellum will publish Keep Your Enemies Close on August 3, 2027.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover of Keep Your Enemies Close, designed by Nicole Caputo. Below, Cheng discusses her love of bold illustrations, the decision to feature a crocodile and a falling house sparrow, and how the cover captures the novel’s sharp humor and complicated power dynamics.
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