Penguin.com (usa)

A Gesture Life

A Gesture Life

A Novel

Chang-rae Lee - Author

Paperback | $15.00 | add to cart | view cart
ISBN 9781573228282 | 368 pages | 01 Oct 2000 | Riverhead | 5.23 x 7.99in | 18 - AND UP
Awards
  • Asian American Literature Award
    Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
    Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award
    North Atlantic Independent Book Award
    New Yorker Book Award: Finalist
    I.M.P.A.C. Dublin Award: Nominee
    ALA Notable Book
    New York Times Notable Book 1999
Summary of A Gesture Life Summary of A Gesture Life Reviews for A Gesture Life An Excerpt from A Gesture Life

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.

"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


To keep up-to-date, input your email address, and we will contact you on publication

Please alert me via email when:


The author releases another book


   

The Weird Sisters Book Cover image
$15.00 | buy now

The Weird Sisters

Eleanor Brown

This is the "delightful" (People) New York Times bestseller that's earned raves from reviewers everywhere is the story of three sisters who love each other, but just don't happen to like each other very much…
Read the author interview.

Down the Darkest Road
$26.95 | buy now

Down the Darkest Road

Tami Hoag

The #1 New York Times-bestselling author Tami Hoag delivers the next book in her Oak Knoll micro-series following Deeper than the Dead and Secrets to the Grave.
Get the reading group guide »