My Year Abroad
A Novel
(Sprache: Englisch)
INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A New York Times Notable Book * Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, TIME, and Marie Claire
A manifesto to happiness the one found when you stop running from who you are. New York Times Book Review
An...
A New York Times Notable Book * Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, TIME, and Marie Claire
A manifesto to happiness the one found when you stop running from who you are. New York Times Book Review
An...
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INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLERA New York Times Notable Book * Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, TIME, and Marie Claire
A manifesto to happiness the one found when you stop running from who you are. New York Times Book Review
An extraordinary book, acrobatic on the level of the sentence, symphonic across its many movements and this is a book that moves My Year Abroad is a wild ride a caper, a romance, a bildungsroman, and something of a satire of how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. Vogue
From the award-winning author of Native Speaker and On Such a Full Sea, an exuberant, provocative story about a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure and about the human capacities for pleasure, pain, and connection.
Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself.
In the breathtaking, precise, elliptical prose that Chang-rae Lee is known for (The New York Times), the narrative alternates between Tiller s outlandish, mind-boggling year with Pong and the strange, riveting, emotionally complex domestic life that follows it, as Tiller processes what happened to him abroad and what it means for his future. Rich with commentary on Western attitudes, Eastern stereotypes, capitalism, global trade, mental health, parenthood, mentorship, and more, My Year Abroad is also an exploration of the surprising effects of cultural immersion on a young American in Asia, on a Chinese man in America, and on an unlikely couple hiding out in the
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suburbs. Tinged at once with humor and darkness, electric with its accumulating surprises and suspense, My Year Abroad is a novel that only Chang-rae Lee could have written, and one that will be read and discussed for years to come.
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Lese-Probe zu „My Year Abroad “
1.I won't say where I am in this greatish country of ours, as that could be dicey for Val and her XL little boy, Victor Jr., but it's a place like most others, nothing too awful or uncomfortable, with no enduring vistas or distinctive traditions to admire, no funny accents or habits of the locals to wonder at or find repellent. Call it whatever you like, but I'll refer to it as Stagno, for while it's definitely landlocked here, several bodies of murky water dot the area. There's a way that the days here curdle like the gunge that collects on the surface of a simmering broth, gunge you must constantly gunge away.
Still, Stagno serves its purpose. It's so ordinary that no one too special would ever choose to live here, though well populated enough that Val and Victor Jr. and I don't stand out. And we ought to stand out. For it would be natural to ask what a college-age kid was doing shacked up with a thirtysomething mom and her eight-year-old son, and why neither of us worked a job, or why the boy didn't go off to school. Do we ever leave the house? For a brief period, we did, but not much anymore. We stream movies and shows. Val is ordering everything online again, including groceries, the only item she regularly ventures out for being a grease-soaked foot-long hoagie named the Widowmaker that is the carrot for Victor Jr. when he reaches his daily tolerance for our homeschooling. There is no stick. Val handles social studies and arts and I cover math and science, but all in all we get a C+ for conception, execution, and effort, which Victor Jr. is well aware of and is undoubtedly banking on using against his mother someday. He's an exceedingly smart, cute kid, if notably hirsute, something genetically cross-wired for sure because a kid his age shouldn't have arm and leg and back hair and definitely not the downy mustache, the nap of which the boy caresses whenever he's noodling his human child's
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plight.
In the future Victor Jr. may strategically deploy my name, but we still can't predict the full extent of my presence in his life. What we know is this: Val and I have a good thing going. We try to see our roles as limited in scope and intensity. We aren't aspiring to all-time greatness, whether in homeschooling or partnering. We aren't each other's stand-ins for the world-as-it-should-be. My stated obligations to Val are to treat Victor Jr. better than the sometimes unruly pupster that he is, and to be, as she says, her reliably uberant fuck buddy (ex- and prot-), and finally to pick up around this cramped exurban house so it doesn't get too skanky. In return, I have her excellent company and a place to stash myself for however long we mutually wish. I require nothing of her at all, except that she not ask after my family, or what I was doing before I met her several months ago, or why my only possessions were the very clothes I was wearing, a very small Japanese-made folding knife, and a dark brushed-metal ATM card that until recently magically summoned cash every time I used it.
I know something about Val because she basically told me her recent life story right after we first met in a food court of the Hong Kong International Airport. She was ahead of me in line with Victor Jr., who was as usual gaming on his handheld, and found that her credit cards weren't working and had no cash. When the boy heard this he immediately started wailing about the depth of his hunger, which I have come to know as bottomless. My impulse was to jam a duty-free baton of Toblerone between his oddly super-tiny teeth. But Val, even with her laughing, narrow eyes, the kind certain Asian girls can have, with that wonderful hint of an upward lilt and dark sparkle when they gaze at you that says in a most generous way, Really?, looked like she wanted to don a crown of thorns and climb atop a Viking pyre, so without a beat I paid for their food and was heading off with my own stea
In the future Victor Jr. may strategically deploy my name, but we still can't predict the full extent of my presence in his life. What we know is this: Val and I have a good thing going. We try to see our roles as limited in scope and intensity. We aren't aspiring to all-time greatness, whether in homeschooling or partnering. We aren't each other's stand-ins for the world-as-it-should-be. My stated obligations to Val are to treat Victor Jr. better than the sometimes unruly pupster that he is, and to be, as she says, her reliably uberant fuck buddy (ex- and prot-), and finally to pick up around this cramped exurban house so it doesn't get too skanky. In return, I have her excellent company and a place to stash myself for however long we mutually wish. I require nothing of her at all, except that she not ask after my family, or what I was doing before I met her several months ago, or why my only possessions were the very clothes I was wearing, a very small Japanese-made folding knife, and a dark brushed-metal ATM card that until recently magically summoned cash every time I used it.
I know something about Val because she basically told me her recent life story right after we first met in a food court of the Hong Kong International Airport. She was ahead of me in line with Victor Jr., who was as usual gaming on his handheld, and found that her credit cards weren't working and had no cash. When the boy heard this he immediately started wailing about the depth of his hunger, which I have come to know as bottomless. My impulse was to jam a duty-free baton of Toblerone between his oddly super-tiny teeth. But Val, even with her laughing, narrow eyes, the kind certain Asian girls can have, with that wonderful hint of an upward lilt and dark sparkle when they gaze at you that says in a most generous way, Really?, looked like she wanted to don a crown of thorns and climb atop a Viking pyre, so without a beat I paid for their food and was heading off with my own stea
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Autoren-Porträt von Chang-rae Lee
Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, as well as My Year Abroad, On Such a Full Sea, A Gesture Life, Aloft, and The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A 2021 winner of the Award of Merit for the Novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Chang-rae Lee teaches writing at Stanford University.
Bibliographische Angaben
- Autor: Chang-rae Lee
- 2022, 496 Seiten, Maße: 13 x 20,1 cm, Kartoniert (TB), Englisch
- Verlag: Riverhead Books
- ISBN-10: 1594634580
- ISBN-13: 9781594634581
- Erscheinungsdatum: 08.02.2022
Sprache:
Englisch
Pressezitat
Praise for My Year Abroad: A wild tale that moves coolly between satire and thriller . . . . Lee tells a story of what it means to be plucked from darkness into the light of recognition, and in doing so, explores the fundamental human desires to be seen and to love. The Washington Post
A wild-ride picaresque, wisecracking, funny, ambitious, full of sex and danger. The New York Times Book Review
Exuberant . . . Lee's writing style, as usual, is alive with wit and satiric social commentary boisterous and fun. NPR, Fresh Air
My Year Abroad is an extraordinary book, acrobatic on the level of the sentence, symphonic across its many movements and this is a book that moves. . . . My Year Abroad is a wild ride a caper, a romance, a bildungsroman, and something of a satire of how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. Vogue.com
A moving saga about family and loss, embedded in what reads like a romp. Ultimately, Lee has succeeded in creating that rare type of novel, one which is both sneakily profound and a blast to read. San Francisco Chronicle
Dickens meets globalism in this new work from one of our most celebrated writers. OprahDaily.com
Chang-rae Lee s new global adventure is his most essentially American novel. . . . Long preoccupied with the ways identity holds people back, Lee now seems to want to write about how those things open us up, for good or ill. Los Angeles Times
Chang-rae Lee's propulsive dark comedy re-creates a Dantean descent into a globalism teetering on disaster. . . . a pulse-raising page-turner, with dazzling moments and a Saunders-esque riot of marketing gimmicks and junk food. Star Tribune
Reading My Year Abroad feels like watching a master juggler at work; Lee, the author of five other novels, highlights his accomplished literary skills within this kaleidoscopic, dynamic narrative.
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Electric Literature
A syncopated surprise, with an ending that will be sure to leave you texting all your friends. NYMag.com/Vulture
Chang-rae Lee s latest novel is about much more than a wild adventure abroad. . . . It s an energetic but tender exploration of cultural immersion, ambition and pleasure that takes many unexpected turns. Time.com
Equal parts insightful, suspenseful and darkly funny. PureWow
Tinged with dark humor and rich with commentary. Fortune.com
A riotously funny, bizarre, brilliant novel. Medium
Chang-rae Lee's electric new novel has the kind of kinetic energy that makes reading it feel like a full body experience, leaving you wondering and in awe of where exactly it will take you next. . . . a virtuosic, wildly original book one that cements Lee's status as one of the most exciting writers working today. Refinery29
By turns dark, humorous and almost sneakily insightful. GoodHousekeeping.com
My Year Abroad is a strange and stirring amalgam: a tender novel about business, ambition, and appetite. With great generosity, and in a searching, democratic spirit, Chang-rae Lee describes the enticements, mirages, pleasures and catastrophes that attend not only the pursuit of wealth but the pursuit of happiness in all its forms, romantic, domestic, and, yes, gustatory. In Pong Lou, he has given American literature a character who deserves his place among other tragic dreamers, from Gatsby to J.R. Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Middlesex
"For a quarter century now, from book to book, [Chang-rae Lee] has explored the ever-urgent themes of alienation, assimilation, and identity with unmatched assurance and acuity. He has redefined not only what it means to be American, but the fabric of the Great American Novel itself." Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Interpreter of Maladies
My Year Abroad is a novel of astonishing wit and wisdom and scope, a globe-spanning story about those powerful first youthful encounters with love and evil and heartbreak and beauty. It s also, by the way, enormously fun to read. Chang-rae Lee is, clearly, a master. Nathan Hill, The New York Times bestselling author of The Nix
[A] wildly inventive comic novel . . . Chang-rae Lee has written a surprising, spirited, keenly observed novel, full of the crazy and the profound. BookPage, (starred review)
Lee is supreme, and this high-velocity, shocking, and wise novel, avidly promoted, is emitting an irresistible magnetic force. Booklist, (starred review)
Lee is masterful from passage to passage. . . . A sage study in how readily we re undone by our appetites." Kirkus Reviews
"This literary whirlwind has Lee running on all cylinders." Publishers Weekly, (starred review)
A syncopated surprise, with an ending that will be sure to leave you texting all your friends. NYMag.com/Vulture
Chang-rae Lee s latest novel is about much more than a wild adventure abroad. . . . It s an energetic but tender exploration of cultural immersion, ambition and pleasure that takes many unexpected turns. Time.com
Equal parts insightful, suspenseful and darkly funny. PureWow
Tinged with dark humor and rich with commentary. Fortune.com
A riotously funny, bizarre, brilliant novel. Medium
Chang-rae Lee's electric new novel has the kind of kinetic energy that makes reading it feel like a full body experience, leaving you wondering and in awe of where exactly it will take you next. . . . a virtuosic, wildly original book one that cements Lee's status as one of the most exciting writers working today. Refinery29
By turns dark, humorous and almost sneakily insightful. GoodHousekeeping.com
My Year Abroad is a strange and stirring amalgam: a tender novel about business, ambition, and appetite. With great generosity, and in a searching, democratic spirit, Chang-rae Lee describes the enticements, mirages, pleasures and catastrophes that attend not only the pursuit of wealth but the pursuit of happiness in all its forms, romantic, domestic, and, yes, gustatory. In Pong Lou, he has given American literature a character who deserves his place among other tragic dreamers, from Gatsby to J.R. Jeffrey Eugenides, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Middlesex
"For a quarter century now, from book to book, [Chang-rae Lee] has explored the ever-urgent themes of alienation, assimilation, and identity with unmatched assurance and acuity. He has redefined not only what it means to be American, but the fabric of the Great American Novel itself." Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Interpreter of Maladies
My Year Abroad is a novel of astonishing wit and wisdom and scope, a globe-spanning story about those powerful first youthful encounters with love and evil and heartbreak and beauty. It s also, by the way, enormously fun to read. Chang-rae Lee is, clearly, a master. Nathan Hill, The New York Times bestselling author of The Nix
[A] wildly inventive comic novel . . . Chang-rae Lee has written a surprising, spirited, keenly observed novel, full of the crazy and the profound. BookPage, (starred review)
Lee is supreme, and this high-velocity, shocking, and wise novel, avidly promoted, is emitting an irresistible magnetic force. Booklist, (starred review)
Lee is masterful from passage to passage. . . . A sage study in how readily we re undone by our appetites." Kirkus Reviews
"This literary whirlwind has Lee running on all cylinders." Publishers Weekly, (starred review)
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