Best Selling Books by Chang-rae Lee

ONE OF THE ATLANTIC’S GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE PAST 100 YEARS The debut novel from critically acclaimed and New York Times–bestselling author of On Such a Full Sea and My Year Abroad. In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away. Park''s harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped him as a natural spy. But the very attributes that help him to excel in his profession put a strain on his marriage to his American wife and stand in the way of his coming to terms with his young son''s death. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, his very identity is tested, and he must figure out who he is amid not only the conflicts within himself but also within the ethnic and political tensions of the New York City streets. Native Speaker is a story of cultural alienation. It is about fathers and sons, about the desire to connect with the world rather than stand apart from it, about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.

Read an essay by Chang-rae Lee here. The bestselling, award-winning writer of Native Speaker, Aloft, and My Year Abroad returns with his biggest, most ambitious novel yet: a spellbinding story of how love and war echo through an entire lifetime. With his three critically acclaimed novels, Chang-rae Lee has established himself as one of the most talented writers of contemporary literary fiction. Now, with The Surrendered, Lee has created a book that amplifies everything we''ve seen in his previous works, and reads like nothing else. It is a brilliant, haunting, heartbreaking story about how love and war inalterably change the lives of those they touch. June Han was only a girl when the Korean War left her orphaned; Hector Brennan was a young GI who fled the petty tragedies of his small town to serve his country. When the war ended, their lives collided at a Korean orphanage where they vied for the attentions of Sylvie Tanner, the beautiful yet deeply damaged missionary wife whose elusive love seemed to transform everything. Thirty years later and on the other side of the world, June and Hector are reunited in a plot that will force them to come to terms with the mysterious secrets of their past, and the shocking acts of love and violence that bind them together. As Lee unfurls the stunning story of June, Hector, and Sylvie, he weaves a profound meditation on the nature of heroism and sacrifice, the power of love, and the possibilities for mercy, salvation, and surrendering oneself to another. Combining the complex themes of identity and belonging of Native Speaker and A Gesture Life with the broad range, energy, and pure storytelling gifts of Aloft, Chang-rae Lee has delivered his most ambitious, exciting, and unforgettable work yet. It is a mesmerizu00ading novel, elegantly suspenseful and deeply affecting.

The second novel from the critically acclaimed New York Times–bestselling author Chang-rae Lee. His remarkable debut novel was called "rapturous" (The New York Times Book Review), "revelatory" (Vogue), and "wholly innovative" (Kirkus Reviews). It was the recipient of six major awards, including the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN award. Now Chang-rae Lee has written a powerful and beautifully crafted second novel that leaves no doubt about the extraordinary depth and range of his talent. A Gesture Life is the story of a proper man, an upstanding citizen who has come to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his boundaries and to make his neighbors comfortable in his presence. Yet as his story unfolds, precipitated by the small events surrounding him, we see his life begin to unravel. Gradually we learn the mystery that has shaped the core of his being: his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean Comfort Woman when he served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II. In A Gesture Life, Chang-rae Lee leads us with dazzling control through a taut, suspenseful story about love, family, and community—and the secrets we harbor. As in Native Speaker, he writes of the ways outsiders conform in order to survive and the price they pay for doing so. It is a haunting, breathtaking display of talent by an acclaimed young author.

“Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and On Such a Full Sea provides all that and more. . . . With On Such a Full Sea, [Chang-rae Lee] has found a new way to explore his old preoccupation: the oft-told tale of the desperate, betraying, lonely human heart.”—Andrew Sean Greer, The New York Times Book Review “I''ve never been a fan of grand hyperbolic declarations in book reviews, but faced with On Such a Full Sea, I have no choice but to ask: Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?”—Porochista Khakpour, The Los Angeles Times From the beloved award-winning author of Native Speaker,The Surrendered, and My Year Abroad, a highly provocative, deeply affecting story of one woman’s legendary quest in a shocking, future America. On Such a Full Sea takes Chang-rae Lee’s elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way readers think about the world they live in. In a future, long-declining America, society is strictly stratified by class. Long-abandoned urban neighborhoods have been repurposed as highwalled, self-contained labor colonies. And the members of the labor class—descendants of those brought over en masse many years earlier from environmentally ruined provincial China—find purpose and identity in their work to provide pristine produce and fish to the small, elite, satellite charter villages that ring the labor settlement. In this world lives Fan, a female fish-tank diver, who leaves her home in the B-Mor settlement (once known as Baltimore), when the man she loves mysteriously disappears. Fan’s journey to find him takes her out of the safety of B-Mor, through the anarchic Open Counties, where crime is rampant with scant governmental oversight, and to a faraway charter village, in a quest that will soon become legend to those she left behind.

The New York Times–bestselling novel by the critically acclaimed author of Native Speaker, A Gesture Life and My Year Abroad. At 59, Jerry Battle is coasting through life. His favorite pastime is flying his small plane high above Long Island. Aloft, he can escape from the troubles that plague his family, neighbors, and loved ones on the ground. But he can''t stay in the air forever. Only months before his 60th birthday, a culmination of family crises finally pull Jerry down from his emotionally distant course. Jerry learns that his family''s stability is in jeopardy. His father, Hank, is growing increasingly unhappy in his assisted living facility. His son, Jack, has taken over the family landscaping business but is running it into bankruptcy. His daughter, Theresa, has become pregnant and has been diagnosed with cancer. His longtime girlfriend, Rita, who helped raise his children, has now moved in with another man. And Jerry still has unanswered questions that he must face regarding the circumstances surrounding the death of his late wife. Since the day his wife died, Jerry has turned avoiding conflict into an art form-the perfect expression being his solitary flights from which he can look down on a world that appears serene and unscathed. From his comfortable distance, he can''t see the messy details, let alone begin to confront them. But Jerry is learning that in avoiding conflict, he is also avoiding contact with the people he loves most.

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER A New York Times Notable Book * Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, TIME, and Marie Claire “A manifesto to happiness—the one found when you stop running from who you are.” –New York Times Book Review “An extraordinary book, acrobatic on the level of the sentence, symphonic across its many movements—and this is a book that moves…My Year Abroad is a wild ride—a caper, a romance, a bildungsroman, and something of a satire of how to get filthy rich in rising Asia.” – Vogue From the award-winning author of Native Speaker and On Such a Full Sea, an exuberant, provocative story about a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure – and about the human capacities for pleasure, pain, and connection. Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself. In the breathtaking, “precise, elliptical prose” that Chang-rae Lee is known for (The New York Times), the narrative alternates between Tiller’s outlandish, mind-boggling year with Pong and the strange, riveting, emotionally complex domestic life that follows it, as Tiller processes what happened to him abroad and what it means for his future. Rich with commentary on Western attitudes, Eastern stereotypes, capitalism, global trade, mental health, parenthood, mentorship, and more, My Year Abroad is also an exploration of the surprising effects of cultural immersion—on a young American in Asia, on a Chinese man in America, and on an unlikely couple hiding out in the suburbs. Tinged at once with humor and darkness, electric with its accumulating surprises and suspense, My Year Abroad is a novel that only Chang-rae Lee could have written, and one that will be read and discussed for years to come.

Una storia accorata e avvolgente che ha portato questo libro ai posti più alti delle classifiche americane, raccogliendo un unanime consenso di critica che ha fatto citare al «New York Times» La scelta di Sophie .

June Han se ha forjado una vida a miles de kilómetros del lugar donde nació: ha montado su negocio en Nueva York. Pero en su pasado hay secretos de los que no ha hablado jamás con nadie, y treinta años después de escapar de una Corea destruida por la guerra, ha llegado la hora de enfrentarse a ellos. Hector Brennan, «un fracasado de principio a fin», es el hombre que hace ya mucho tiempo salvó la vida de June. Y entre June y Hector está la historia de la hermosa y desgarrada Sylvie Tanner, cuyo amor perseguían ambos. En una travesía que los lleva desde una Corea en ruinas hasta un antiguo campo de batalla italiano, June y Hector van en busca de su pasado, unidos por un legado de espanto, violencia y amor. Chang-rae Lee propone una profunda meditación sobre la naturaleza del heroísmo y el sacrificio, el poder del amor y la posibilidad de salvarnos, de rendirnos el uno al otro. «Magistral, poderosa y conmovedora, de lectura compulsiva, pero impregnada de un profundo sentido moral» (Publisher?s Weekly).

A clash of ethnic and professional loyalties is the subject of this novel. The protagonist is a Korean-American who works for a private intelligence service and is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician. To blow the whistle on a fellow ethnic would hurt his tribe, on the other hand there is his professional reputation to consider.

June Han est encore une enfant lorsque la guerre de Coréedécime sa famille. Sauvée par un G.I., Hector Brennan,elle est placée dans un orphelinat.Trente ans plus tard, l’ancien soldat a choisi une vie sanscontours, guidée par l’alcool et l’autodestruction. June estdevenue Mrs Singer, une femme de 47 ans qui mène une carrièreexemplaire à New York. Mais derrière cette réussite, Juneest surtout une mère inquiète. Depuis la mort de son mari,ses relations avec son fils, Nicholas, ne sont plus les mêmes.Le jour de sa remise de diplôme, le jeune homme choisit de partiren Europe pour un long voyage. Décidée à retrouver son fils,June demande à Hector de l’aider. Ensemble, ils vont remonterles méandres de la mémoire.Roman magistral sur les ravages de la guerre, Les Vulnérablestient autant de la fresque historique que du récit intime. Au tempsdes héros, succède celui des survivants, cette vie d’après quechacun tente de reconstruire. Avec un talent hors du commun,Chang-rae Lee interroge l’Amérique et son mythe éternel. Le paysde tous les possibles est-il vraiment une terre d’accueil pour ceuxque l’on sacrifie au nom de l’Histoire ?

Vu d''en haut, tout semble parfait dans la vie de Jerry Baffle. A ses heures perdues, ce descendant d''immigrés italiens survole dans son trois-places Cessna la jolie banlieue de Long Island où il habite. Son fils Jack vit confortablement et sa fille Theresa se plaît dans son milieu intellectuel et universitaire. Seule ombre au tableau : Rita, avec qui Jerry a vécu vingt ans, vient de le quitter. Lors de ses fiançailles, Theresa lui apprend qu''elle est enceinte, mais aussi qu''elle est atteinte d''un cancer qu''elle ne soignera pas. Jerry, expert dans l''art de la fuite, n''a plus le choix. Il doit se confronter à la réalité et s''impliquer pour sauvegarder ce qui peut encore l''être: les liens du sang. En mouvements concentriques, comme dans un vol d''approche, Le Ciel de Long Island dévoile les pans d''une existence jusqu''à en cerner le point le plus vulnérable. A travers le portrait de cet homme dont on découvre la fragilité et les drames intimes, Chang-rae Lee éclaire le rêve américain dans ses moindres recoins. Styliste exceptionnel, il nous livre, dans la veine de Richard Ford ou de John Cheever, sa vision d''une Amérique dont l''identité ne cesse de s''effriter.

Een Amerikaanse kankerpatiënte van Koreaanse afkomst reist naar Italië om haar zoon nog eens te zien voordat ze sterft.

Een bejaarde Amerikaanse man van Japans-Koreaanse afkomst laat eindelijk zijn gevoelens over zijn ervaringen in het Japanse leger tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog toe.

Thirty years after vying for the attentions of a beautiful but damaged missionary wife at an orphanage, Korean orphan June Han and former GI Hector Brennan are reunited by a plot that forces them to come to terms with mysterious secrets from their past.

Een bijna 60-jarige amateurvlieger krijgt de midlifecrisis die hij jarenlang op afstand heeft gehouden, onontkoombaar op zijn bord.

Een prachtig portret van een man, een Amerikaan van Koreaanse komaf, die gevangen zit tussen twee culturen en twee levens. ''Moedertaal'' is en thriller, een roman en een boek over vooroordelen in één.