In this stunning novel, Darin Strauss combines fiction with astonishing fact to tell the story of history?s most famous twins. Born in Siam in 1811 – on a squalid houseboat on the Mekong River – Chang and Eng Bunker were international celebrities before the age of twenty. Touring the world?s stages as a circus act, they settled in the American South just prior to the Civil War. They eventually married two sisters from North Carolina, fathering twenty-one children between them, and lived for more than six decades never more than seven inches apart, attached at the chest by a small band of skin and cartilage.

Woven from the fabric of fact, myth, and imagination, Strauss?s narrative gives poignant, articulate voice to these legendary brothers, and humanizes the freakish legend that grew up around them. Sweeping from the Far East and the court of the King of Siam to the shared intimacy of their lives in America, Chang and Eng rescues one of the nineteenth century?s most fabled human oddities from the sideshow of history, drawing from their extraordinary lives a novel of exceptional power and beauty.

Astonishing...dazzling...Strauss proves himself to a be a writer of great imaginative gifts...a risky, ambitious and beautifully realized novel. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Humor...humanity...aching sadness...a story of heroic longing. (The New York Times Book Review)

Strauss elevates Chang and Eng's story far beyond the sideshow...a haunting and thoroughly entertaining parable of loyalty and love. (The Los Angeles Times)

An ambitious, assured first novel...Strauss imagines these men in full. They are given voice, their fears, hopes, and dreams made vital...memorable. (The Boston Globe)

A nuanced...affecting portrait... . Evident is the author's sympathy for his characters and his ability to convey the brothers' enduring love for each other. (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)

As lyrical as it is daring. (The New Yorker)

Haunting. (People magazine)

An effortlessly original, deeply human portrait. (New York Newsday)

Now in paperback comes the brilliant reimagining of the remarkable lives of the original "Siamese Twins". Sweeping from the Far East and the court of the king of Siam to the shared intimacy of their lives in America, "Chang and Eng" rescues one of the 19th century's most fabled human oddities from the sideshow of history.

In this stunning debut novel, Darin Strauss combines fiction with astonishing fact to tell the story of history's most famous twins. Born in Siam in 1811-on a squalid houseboat on the Mekong River-Chang and Eng Bunker were international celebrities before the age of twenty. Touring the world's stages as a circus act, they settled in the American South just prior to the Civil War. They eventually married two sisters from North Carolina, fathering twenty-one children between them, and lived for more than six decades never more than seven inches apart, attached at the chest by a small band of skin and cartilage.

Woven from the fabric of fact, myth, and imagination, Strauss's narrative gives poignant, articulate voice to these legendary brothers and humanizes the freakish legend that grew up around them. Sweeping from the Far East and the court of the king of Siam to the shared intimacy of their lives in America, Chang and Eng rescues one of the nineteenth century's most fabled human oddities from the sideshow of history, drawing from their extraordinary lives a novel of exceptional power and beauty.