Audiobooks by Chang-Rae Lee

The debut novel from critically-acclaimed and New York Times-bestselling author of On Such a Full Sea and My Year Abroad. In Native Speaker, 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 is a story of cultural alienation. It is about fathers and sons, about the desire to connect with the world rather than stand apart from it, about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.

Chang-Rae Lee (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

My Year Abroad: A Novel

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER "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 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.

Chang-Rae Lee (Author), Lawrence Kao (Narrator)

Audiobook

A Gesture Life

Chang-rae Lee's A Gesture Life is now available for the first time in audio! His remarkable debut novel was called "rapturous" (The New York Times Book Review), "revelatory" (Vogue), and "wholly innovative" (Kirkus Reviews). It was the recipient of six major awards, including the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN award. Now Chang-rae Lee has written a powerful and beautifully crafted second novel that leaves no doubt about the extraordinary depth and range of his talent. A Gesture Life is the story of a proper man, an upstanding citizen who has come to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his boundaries and to make his neighbors comfortable in his presence. Yet as his story unfolds, precipitated by the small events surrounding him, we see his life begin to unravel. Gradually we learn the mystery that has shaped the core of his being: his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean Comfort Woman when he served as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II. In A Gesture Life, Chang-rae Lee leads us with dazzling control through a taut, suspenseful story about love, family, and community--and the secrets we harbor. As in Native Speaker, he writes of the ways outsiders conform in order to survive and the price they pay for doing so. It is a haunting, breathtaking display of talent by an acclaimed young author

Chang-Rae Lee (Author), Greg Watanabe (Narrator)

Audiobook

On Such a Full Sea: A Novel

Watching a talented writer take a risk is one of the pleasures of devoted reading, and On Such a Full Sea provides all that and more. . . . With On Such a Full Sea, [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, The New York Times Book Review 'I've never been a fan of grand hyperbolic declarations in book reviews, but faced with On Such a Full Sea, I have no choice but to ask: Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?'Porochista Khakpour, The Los Angeles Times From the beloved award-winning author of Native Speaker and The Surrendered, a highly provocative, deeply affecting story of one woman’s legendary quest in a shocking, future America. On Such a Full Sea takes Chang-rae Lee’s elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way readers think about the world they live in. 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.

Chang-Rae Lee, Change-Rae Lee (Author), B.D. Wong, Bd Wong (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Surrendered

PEN/Hemingway Award-winning, best-selling author Chang-rae Lee delivers a 'completely engrossing story of great complexity and tragedy' (Library Journal). At the end of the Korean War, the lives of orphan June Han and American soldier Hector Brennan collide. Thirty years later, they meet again and are forced to come to terms with the secrets of their devastating past. 'Lee's masterful fourth novel bursts with drama and human anguish as it documents the ravages and indelible effects of war '''Publishers Weekly, starred review

Chang-Rae Lee (Author), James Yaegashi (Narrator)

Audiobook

Native Speaker

Narrator Henry Park, son of a Korean-American grocer, is an undercover operative for a vaguely sinister private intelligence agency. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, Park finds his family, culture, and identity endangered by the secrets he uncovers. Swirled into the turbulent background of New York City politics and growing ethnic tensions, Park must come to terms with his American wife, Lelia, and the recent death of his young son while fighting an emotional attachment to the people he is investigating. A compelling intrigue builds while insights into current political events, love, culture, and family abound.

Chang-Rae Lee (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

Audiobook

Aloft

New York Times bestseller Aloft follows the life of Jerry Battle, whose favorite diversion is to take his small plane and fly solo over Long Island. When his daughter and her fiancé arrive from Oregon to announce their marriage plans and Theresa's dangerous pregnancy, he thinks back over his life and begins to face his disengagement with it and with his relationships with others: with his deceased wife, the circumstances of whose death he has never fully admitted to; with his former girlfriend, for whom he still longs; with his pregnant daughter, who refuses to address the cancer that is killing her; with his son, who is losing the family business; and with his father, who is in a nursing home. Aloft is a quiet yet intense study of family, the American dream, and the American character.

Chang-Rae Lee (Author), Don Leslie (Narrator)

Audiobook