A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

Finalist for the Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award

A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection

Longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize

The universally acclaimed debut novel from a powerful new voice in literary fiction.

At birth, Peter Huang is given the Chinese name juan chaun, meaning powerful king. He is the exalted only son in a family of daughters; the one who will finally fulfill his father's dreams of western masculinity. But Peter has different dreams: he knows that he is a girl.

Peter and his sisters—the elegant Adele, the shrewd Helen, and Bonnie, the bon vivant—grow up in a house of many secrets, then escape the confines of small-town Ontario and spread from Montreal to California to Berlin. Peter's own journey is obstructed by playground bullies, masochistic lovers, Christian ex-gays and the ever-present shadow of his father.

Sensitive, witty and stunningly assured, Kim Fu's debut novel is a coming-of-age tale like no other and marks the emergence of an astonishing new Canadian literary voice. Both lyrical and steely-eyed, For Today I Am a Boy shows us an unforgettable struggle: that of a woman in the body of a Chinese Canadian man.