Awaiting Dawn

Awaiting Dawn is a quietly powerful novel by Wang Yiqiao, set in the rain-soaked streets of Belfast. It follows Nolan Wang, a reserved court interpreter who has spent seven years translating other people's pain-domestic abuse, theft, deportation-without ever speaking his own. His life is a routine of silence, marked by cold tea, a worn copy of Kant, and a long wait for something undefined.
That wait ends when Vicky Liu, a Chinese-American care worker exhausted by night shifts and family obligations, walks into his bar and asks，"Can I sit here?" Their connection deepens through small, tangible gestures: fixing a dripping tap, making congee at 3 a.m., watering a pot of spring onions. As Vicky faces a family crisis in San Francisco and Nolan learns to write in the first person, the novel explores what it means to be needed versus wanted-and how love is built not in grand declarations, but in daily rituals.
With prose as patient as Belfast rain, Awaiting Dawn is a meditation on belonging, grief, and the courage it takes to say "I" after a lifetime of translating others. It is a story about two people learning to wait-and to be worth waiting for.