Native Speaker - Hardcover

Lee, Chang-rae

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1573220019 ISBN 13: 9781573220019

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 1995

Synopsis

Henry Park, a Korean-American private spy, is challenged by a new assignment to investigate a rising politician, but the secrets he uncovers threaten his cultural identity and his relationship with his wife. A first novel. 30,000 first printing. $30,000 ad/promo.

About this title

About the Author

Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction; A Gesture Life; Aloft; The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and On Such a Full Sea. Selected by The New Yorker as one of the ���20 Writers for the 21st Century,��� Chang-rae Lee is Professor professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and the a Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yonsei University.

Reviews

Espionage acts as a metaphor for the uneasy relationship of Amerasians to American society in this eloquent, thought-provoking tale of a young Korean-American's struggle to conjoin the fragments of his personality in culturally diverse New York City. Raised in a family and culture valuing careful control of emotions and appearances, narrator Henry Park, son of a successful Korean-American grocer, works as an undercover operative for a vaguely sinister private intelligence agency. He and his "American wife," Lelia, are estranged, partly as a result of Henry's stoical way of coping with the recent death of their young son. Henry is also having trouble at work, becoming emotionally attached to the people he should be investigating. Ruminating on his upbringing, he traces the path that has led to his present sorrow; as he infiltrates the staff of a popular Korean-American city councilman, he discovers the broader, societal context of the issues he has been grappling with personally. Writing in a precise yet freewheeling prose that takes us deep into Henry's head, first-novelist Lee packs this story, whose intrigue is well measured and compelling, with insights into both current political events and timeless questions of love, culture, family bonds and identity. This is an auspicious debut for Riverhead Books, Putnam's new division. First serial to Granta; QPB selection; audio rights to Brilliance; author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Assigned to spy on a fellow Korean American, Henry Park faces an acute crisis of cultural conscience. LJ's reviewer found Henry a "wonderful, honest creation."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Lyrical, mysterious, and nuanced, the poignant moodiness of this first novel by a 28-year-old Korean American lingers long after the final page is turned. It deals with the imprint the immigrant experience in America makes on a person's psyche. Lee tells the story in the voice of Henry Park, a second-generation Korean who works as a privately employed spy and at home deals with a shaky marriage and the death of his young son. Assigned to get close to an up-and-coming Korean American politician, Park suddenly discovers he must do things he has tried to avoid all his life--face up to his roots, evaluate his loyalties, find his voice, and understand the pain he carries deep within. Beautifully written and intriguingly plotted, the novel interweaves politics, love, family, and loss as Park starts to make sense of the rhythm of his life. As he does, his experiences illuminate the many-layered immigrant experience in general, and the Asian immigrant experience in particular, in a way that many readers will understand and appreciate. Mary Ellen Sullivan

Edition details

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1573220019
• ISBN 13: 9781573220019
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 324