Chang and Eng Author: Darin Strauss
	Book Information Publisher: Dutton Books Book Type: Hardcover Rating: 14 ISBN-13: 9780525945123 - ISBN-10: 0525945121 Publication Date: 6/1/2000 Pages: 323

Born attached at the chest, Chang and Eng Bunker were the Siamese twins for whom the term was coined, one of the nineteenth century's most fabled human oddities. Now Darin Strauss has rescued the twins from the sideshow of history, drawing from their extraordinary conjoined lives a first novel of exceptional beauty.

Taken from Thailand as adolescents, Chang and Eng toured the world's stages, quickly finding celebrity status while performing in a cage. Where Chang was coarse, gregarious, and prone to drinking spells, Eng was introverted, refined, and an advocate of temperance and education. During their lives they were greeted by royalty, toasted by London, and yet mocked by carnival crowds. The twins eventually married two sisters from North Carolina and settled down to a life of farming and raising two families, which they did with exceptional results by fathering twenty-one children. Though forever bound, they died at separate times. Chang passed away at age sixty-three, four hours before Eng--leaving his brother alone at last.

Narrated by Eng, Chang and Eng follows the twins from poverty to wealth, from solitude to boundless love, from the court of the King of Siam to the crowded bedroom of their North Carolina home. In the tradition of I Was Amelia Earhart and Memoirs of a Geisha, Chang and Eng is an unforgettable and sublimely moving story that reveals above all the longings and humanity of these remarkable twins.