Tender Age

<P><B>'Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee?'</B><I><B>Los Angeles Times</B></I></P><P><B>'He has redefined not only what it means to be American, but the fabric of the Great American Novel itself.' Jhumpa Lahiri</B></P><P><B>'Chang-rae Lee can do no wrong in my mind - I devoured Lee's last novel,</B><I><B>My Year Abroad</B></I><B>, and I can't wait for this one.' </B><I><B>LitHub</B></I><br><br><B>From the Pulitzer Prize shortlisted novelist, a story of guilt, innocence, and a boy on the cusp of adolescence</B></P><P>'Lee's latest novel is a tale of almosts: a family of working-class immigrants almost living the American dream; an 11-year-old boy, almost transitioning into adulthood and straddling the worlds of his doting Korean parents and a semi-feral gaggle of neighborhood kids.' <I><B>New York Times </B></I><B>Most Anticipated Books of 2026</B></P><P>A spellbinding exploration of masculinity and family dynamics as seen through the confused eyes of a prepubescent child of immigrants,<I>A Tender Age</I>joins the rich tradition of the coming-of-age novel. The natural descendent of characters like Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caulfield, Korean-American Jeon-Gi is torn between competing ideas of himself. At home, his working-class parents dote on him. Outside, he is part of a roving pack of kids with dominion over a derelict baseball field, weedy parking lot, and rusty jungle gym. Getting into and out of trouble is all-consuming. But the summer he turns eleven, he becomes embroiled in a staggering series of events reverberating far beyond himself and his family.</P><P>Devastating in its emotional precision,<I>A Tender Age</I>captures a family and community in striking distance of the American dream, and a young person on the precipice of adult knowledge, looking at his own culpability and looking away - then thinking about it for the rest of his life.</P>