A Gesture Life

The debut novel from critically-acclaimed and New York Times — bestselling author Chang-rae Lee.

In , 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

His most recent book, , will be published in January 2014.

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.

“Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and provides all that and more. . With , [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,

“I've never been a fan of grand hyperbolic declarations in book reviews, but faced with , I have no choice but to ask: Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?”—Porochista Khakpour,

From the beloved award-winning author of and , a highly provocative, deeply affecting story of one woman’s legendary quest in a shocking, future America.

On Such a Full Sea

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.

A brilliant, haunting story about beauty, loyalty, memory, and war-an unforgettable novel that returns to themes of expatriatism and Korean culture that first made Chang-rae Lee's reputation.

The bestselling and award-winning author of Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, and Aloft returns with a masterful new novel. A spellbinding story, startling in its insights and impact, The Surrendered amplifies the gifts we have seen in Lee's previous works, and, written in the third person, evokes a whole new narrative power.

In The Surrendered, the lasting memory of the Korean War changes the lives of two of its survivors-a Korean girl and an American vet-as well as the lives of those who come to know them. Hector Brennan was a handsome GI stationed in Korea during the war. June Han was a girl orphaned by the fighting. For a season of wartime existence, their lives overlapped at a missionary-run orphanage. Now, thirty years later, they are reunited in the United States in an unusual mission that will force them to come to terms with their individual experiences of that time, but also the secret they share. As Chang-rae Lee moves back and forth between 195 0s Korea and 198 0s New York, New Jersey, and Italy, he weaves a stunning, layered story-exploring issues of class, identity, cultural memory, loyalty, betrayal, and personal reinvention-in the subtly emotional way that readers have come to expect. Building to a powerful revelation of the novel's captivating mystery, this is a beautiful, mesmerizing work, elegantly suspenseful and deeply affecting.