Yellowface by RF Kuang and Fruit Fly by Josh Silver both pose powerful questions about who gets to tell the story, who profits from it, and the dark consequences of ambition and greed in the world of publishing.

In Yellowface, Kuang’s white protagonist hits literary stardom after stealing her Asian American friend’s manuscript, crafting a false life that rapidly spirals out of control.

In Silver’s Fruit Fly, a privileged writer looking for a zeitgeisty subject to cure her writer’s block collides with a young, queer struggling addict with dramatic consequences.

They join Victor Rodger to discuss their sharp, propulsive novels that expose tokenism, exploitation and the fraught ethics of telling another’s story.