Description: A record of youthful longing written with the breath of a literary master! A special edition celebrating the 20th anniversary of the debut of Chang-rae Lee, one of the leading voices in contemporary English-language literature ■ About the Book ★ Winner of the 1996 PEN/Hemingway Award ★ ★ Winner of the 1996 Barnes & Noble Discover Award for New Writers ★ ★ Winner of the 1996 American Book Award ★ ★ Winner of the 1996 QPB New Voices Award ★ ★ Winner of the 1996 Oregon Book Award ★ ★ Named a Notable Book by the American Library Association in 1996 ★ "Who Am I?" — A raw and searing record of one man's internal struggle to find his identity! The wellspring of the literary world of Chang-rae Lee — the Korean American author frequently mentioned as a Nobel Prize candidate — and a modern classic in its own right. Newly published with a fully revised and refined translation by acclaimed literary translator Jeong Young-mok. Native Speaker, the 1995 debut novel by Chang-rae Lee — a leading figure in the American literary world and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature — is being newly released to mark the 20th anniversary of the author's debut. Centered on Henry Park, a Korean American man entangled in a political scandal, the novel explores the life and identity of a man forever destined to live as an outsider. Despite being the first work of a then 30-year-old debut author, Native Speaker was met with widespread critical acclaim upon its 1995 release for its elegant, beautiful prose and its lyrical, tension-filled narrative. The following year, it swept six major literary awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award, becoming a literary sensation. Today, included in Penguin's "Drop Caps" series, it has firmly established itself as a modern classic of English-language literature. Native Speaker also stands as the wellspring for Chang-rae Lee's body of work, which includes four subsequent novels — A Gesture Life, The Surrendered, Aloft, and On Such a Full Sea — through which he has steadily built a distinctive literary world that has made him a strong contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. This edition, the third published in Korea by RH Korea, includes a new preface written by Chang-rae Lee especially for Korean readers, reflecting on the past 20 years and the deep meaning his debut work holds in his life and heart. Adding further significance, this edition features a completely new translation by Jeong Young-mok — widely regarded as one of Korea's finest literary translators — who revisited his original 2003 translation over a decade later to render the novel in a voice true to "here and now," allowing Korean readers to experience Chang-rae Lee and his work as authentically as possible. Recognized for its literary value as required reading for high school students across the U.S. and as part of Princeton University's reading program, Native Speaker is expected to bring the profound resonance and emotional depth unique to Chang-rae Lee's writing to even more readers in Korea on the occasion of the author's 20th debut anniversary. "Who today is a finer novelist than Chang-rae Lee?" — The Los Angeles Times Beautiful sentences that probe the hazy coexistence of good and evil… A masterpiece that transcends a record of wounds and disillusionment to reveal literature's unique power of revelation! Anyone who has read Native Speaker will invariably point first to its delicate, lyrical prose. On the surface, the novel takes the form of a detective story, but readers cannot help but marvel at the profound and resonant eloquence that fills its pages. Verlyn Klinkenborg of The New Yorker praised it, saying, "Every sentence is controlled, enigmatic, poetic, and beautiful," while critic Tim Engles noted that the novel "cleverly illuminates the life of an immigrant destined to remain on the margins of American society through Henry Park's profession as a spy, using his double life as a metaphor for the universal struggle to answer the question, 'Who am I?'" Set in New York, the novel's premise — a Korean American spying on another Korean American — is gripping enough to be read in a single sitting, while also conveying with striking clarity the author's central theme of the search for identity.