Native Speaker - Softcover

Lee, Chang-Rae

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140141316 ISBN 13: 9780140141313

Publisher: Penguin Books / Granta, 1996

Synopsis

Narrator Henry Park, son of a Korean-American grocer, is an undercover operative for a vaguely sinister private intelligence agency. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, Park finds his family, culture, and identity endangered by the secrets he uncovers. Swirled into the turbulent background of New York City politics and growing ethnic tensions, Park must come to terms with his American wife, Lelia, and the recent death of his young son while fighting an emotional attachment to the people he is investigating. A compelling intrigue builds while insights into current political events, love, culture, and family abound.

About this title

Review

Korean-American Henry Park is "surreptitious, B+ student of life, illegal alien, emotional alien, Yellow peril: neo-American, stranger, follower, traitor, spy ..." or so says his wife, in the list she writes upon leaving him. Henry is forever uncertain of his place, a perpetual outsider looking at American culture from a distance. As a man of two worlds, he is beginning to fear that he has betrayed both -- and belongs to neither.

From the Inside Flap

The Bookcassette® format is a special recording technique developed as a means of condensing the full, unabridged audio text of a book to record it on fewer tapes. In order to listen to these tapes, you will need a cassette player with balance control to adjust left/right speaker output. Special adaptors to allow these tapes to be played on any cassette player are available through the publisher or some US retail electronics stores.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books / Granta
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140141316
• ISBN 13: 9780140141313
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336