Description:
In the stunning debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko, the Korean-American daughter of first-generation immigrants strives to join Manhattan's inner circle.
National Book Award finalist Min Jin Lee introduces the unforgettable Casey Han: a strong-willed, Queens-bred daughter of Korean immigrants, who seeks both glamour and insight in Manhattan--a glittering borough she cannot afford. Fresh out of Princeton with an economics degree, no job, and a white boyfriend she cannot introduce to her parents, Casey is determined to claim a space for herself--but how and at what cost? Lee's bestselling, sharp-eyed, sweeping epic of ambition, dreams, and uncertainties of life--set in a landscape where millionaires scramble for free lunches the poor are too proud to accept--is an addictively readable, startlingly sympathetic portrait of intergenerational strife and immigrant struggle, revealing the fascinating lives of a vital community clinging to its old ways in a moneyed city of haves and have-nots. "Mesmerizing." --USA TodayBrief description: Min Jin Lee is a recipient of fellowships in Fiction from the Guggenheim Foundation (2018) and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard (2018-2019). Her novel Pachinko (2017) was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, a runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the Medici Book Club Prize, and one of the New York Times' "Ten Best Books of 2017." A New York Times bestseller, Pachinko was also one of the "Ten Best Books" of the year for BBC and the New York Public Library, and a "best international fiction" pick for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In total, it was on over seventy-five best books of the year lists, including NPR, PBS, and CNN, and it was a selection for Now Read This, the joint book club of PBS NewsHour and the New York Times. Pachinko will be translated into twenty-seven languages. Lee's debut novel Free Food for Millionaires (2007) was one of the best books of the year for the Times of London, NPR's Fresh Air, and USA Today, and it was a national bestseller. Her writings have appeared in the New Yorker, NPR's Selected Shorts, One Story, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, Condé Nast Traveler, the Times of London, andthe Wall Street Journal. Lee served three consecutive seasons as a Morning Forum columnist of the Chosun Ilbo of South Korea. In 2018, she was named as one of Adweek's Creative 100 for being one of the "ten writers and editors who are changing the national conversation," and one of the Guardian's Frederick Douglass 200. She received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Monmouth College. She will be a Writer-in-Residence at Amherst College from 2019-2022.
Review Quotes: Lee has updated the Victorian novel of progress to a postmodern, postfeminist world and imagined a character whose circumstances feel universal.----Chicago Tribune "--Chicago Tribune"