From the acclaimed author of "Native Speaker" comes his second novel about a Japanese World War II veteran who becomes a proper man and upstanding citizen in New York. As his life slowly unravels, he is transported back to his days as a medic in the Japanese army and his obsessive love for a young comfort woman. A "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Summary
From the acclaimed author of "Native Speaker" comes his second novel about a Japanese World War II veteran who becomes a proper man and upstanding citizen in New York. As his life slowly unravels, he is transported back to his days as a medic in the Japanese army and his obsessive love for a young comfort woman. A "New York Times" Notable Book of the Year.
Description
The riveting story of a Japanese immigrant who leads a proper, decorous life in a New York suburb. As his life slowly unravels, he is transported back to his days as a medic in the Japanese army in World War II, and his obsessive love of a young comfort woman.
Awards
Winner of New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Award (Fiction) 2000
Critic Reviews
“"A beautiful, solitary, remarkably tender book."-- The New York Times Book Review " A Gesture Life is the touching, multilayered rumination of an uneasy psyche. It is also a tragic, horrifying page-turner, whose evocation of wartime victims is unforgettable...A deeply involving tale, no less so because we realize, almost from the first chapter, that we can't trust Hata's version of events. [Lee] enlists the reader's full energies to interpret this enigmatic speaker, who saddens, baffles and unfuriates us all at once."-- Chicago Tribune "Once again, this gifted young author has given us a beautifully tapestried story of seeking identity and acceptance in another culture while remaining separate from the tug of it."-- The Christian Science Monitor "Lee elegantly creates suspense out of the seemingly static story of a man trying hard not to feel. He has written a wise and humane novel that both amplifies the themes of identity and exile he addressed in Native Speaker , and creates a wonderfully resonant portrait of a man caught between two cultures and two lives."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times”
"A beautiful, solitary, remarkably tender book."--The New York Times Book Review"A Gesture Life is the touching, multilayered rumination of an uneasy psyche. It is also a tragic, horrifying page-turner, whose evocation of wartime victims is unforgettable...A deeply involving tale, no less so because we realize, almost from the first chapter, that we can't trust Hata's version of events. [Lee] enlists the reader's full energies to interpret this enigmatic speaker, who saddens, baffles and unfuriates us all at once."--Chicago Tribune
"Once again, this gifted young author has given us a beautifully tapestried story of seeking identity and acceptance in another culture while remaining separate from the tug of it."--The Christian Science Monitor
"Lee elegantly creates suspense out of the seemingly static story of a man trying hard not to feel. He has written a wise and humane novel that both amplifies the themes of identity and exile he addressed in Native Speaker, and creates a wonderfully resonant portrait of a man caught between two cultures and two lives."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
About the Author
Chang-Rae Lee was born in South Korea and immigrated to the United States with his family when he was three. A graduate of Yale College, he is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon.
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