Krys Lee is the author of the short story collection Drifting House and How I Became a North Korean. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, the Honor Title in Adult Fiction Literature from the Asian/Pacific American Libraries Association, and a finalist for the BBC International Story Prize. Her fiction, journalism, and literary translations have appeared in Granta, The Kenyon Review, Narrative, San Francisco Chronicle, Corriere della Sera, and The Guardian, among others. She is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Yonsei University, Underwood International College, in South Korea.
"A forceful debut novel...not just another simplistic
indictment of a country in thrall to its Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il,
but a compelling vision of both North and South
Korea." —Alexander Chee, The New York Times Book Review
"Krys Lee invites us into a world Westerners rarely glimpse and can
barely imagine...While tackling weighty themes of power and
politics, Lee zooms in laserlike on minute details to create
moments of startling intimacy...Despite the violence it
encompasses, at the heart of the story is a belief in the human
capacity to transcend hardship, and to hope." —O, The Oprah
Magazine
"The plot is full of drama and the writing is crystal clear...The
more confusing and horrible our world becomes, the more critical
the role of fiction in communicating both the facts and the meaning
of other people’s lives. Krys Lee joins writers like Anthony Marra,
Khaled Hosseini and Elnathan John in this urgent work." —San
Francisco Chronicle
"[Lee] eloquently draws attention to issues of displacement, loss
and identity, and to China’s record of human rights abuses against
North Korean refugees." —The New York Times
“An intense, unforgettable, compassionate study of human
resilience...What Lee teaches us is that there is hope in the most
desperate of circumstances, that the human spirit can still sputter
to life after the worst has happened.” —Miami Herald
"[An] elegant, devastating novel." —The Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
“Krys Lee is a superb writer...Lee has worked with North Korean
refugees and she knows intimately their terror when trying to
survive in a world where it is impossible to distinguish between
friend and foe." —Barbara Demick, The Guardian
"A novel of great sincerity and moral courage, a book that can
stand as a resonant response to the challenge that fiction has no
place in the white heat of political turmoil." —Financial
Times
"Lee's story throws light on a place we know little about, in
heart-wrenching, lyrical detail." —Elle.com, "11 Best Books to Read
in August"
“Lee successfully creates well-formed characters and makes readers
care about their struggles...[It's] impossible to read this novel
without remembering...that many real-life refugees have faced
similar tough decisions and horrors in order to escape." —Christian
Science Monitor
"A masterful portrayal of the personal side of world politics."
—BookPage, "Six Stellar Summer Debuts"
"A powerful tale." —Ladies Home Journal
"An ode to friendship. And freedom." —New York Post, "This Week's
Must-Read Books"
"Krys Lee takes readers past the border and deep into the
lives of defectors...How I Became North Korean is both
delicate and menacing; the book’s details are fascinating, along
with its social and political background. However it is, most of
all, an overwhelming, emotional story. Lee’s book is shaped by its
characters’ fragility, but mostly driven by their courage." —The
Millions
"An extraordinary narrative that is both contemporary testimony and
literary achievement . . . [Krys Lee is] one of the most
elegant, impeccable voices of her youthful generation. Devotees of
authors able to navigate effortlessly between short and longer
forms, including Jhumpa Lahiri and Adam Johnson, will certainly be
blessed to discover Lee’s work." —Library Journal, starred
review
"Haunting . . . A vivid and harrowing read."
—Publishers Weekly
“With How I Became a North Korean, Krys Lee takes us into urgent
and emotional novelistic terrain: the desperate and tenuous realms
defectors are forced to inhabit after escaping North Korea. With
heart and passion, Lee forges a world no other writer could create,
one where the only response to longing and loss is learning to
trust and hope again.” —Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize and National
Book Award-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son and
Fortune Smiles
“This is one of the best books I've read in a good long while. Krys
Lee inhabits three wildly different individuals with precision and
heart. While North Korea is at the center of the novel, the themes
of love, family and our debt to our fellow human beings will
resonate universally.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True
Love Story and Little Failure
“How I Became A North Korean proves that in literature, no story is
too small, nobody is forgotten. With empathy and insight and a deep
sense of place, Krys Lee brings us to one of the most hopeless
corners of the world yet gives us hope and beauty. What a brave and
moving novel.” —Yiyun Li, MacArthur Fellow and PEN/Hemingway
award-winning author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and Kinder
Than Solitude
“I was entranced by How I Became a North Korean, and read it with
increasing admiration. It's such a penetrating work, an education,
really, powered by a determination to salute the stories that have
hitherto passed us by.” —Sunjeev Sahota, Booker Prize shortlisted
author of The Year of the Runaways
“Terrifying, poetic and precise, How I Became a North Korean
captures the crushing human cost of fleeing a dictatorship.”
—Blaine Harden, New York Times bestselling author of Escape from
Camp 14
Praise for Drifting House
"Haunting . . . [Lee] is well on her way to a promising literary
career." —NPR.org
"It is [Lee's] cool telling that allows the tectonic plates of
history, social forces and circumstances to move beneath these
stories, conveying the feeling that something urgent and profound
is at stake, beyond the lives of these striving, damaged and
unforgettable characters." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Drifting House has shades of Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth in
its rendering of split cultural identities. But even more, it
recalls Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness, holding beauty and
brutality in an elegant equipoise. . . . [A] textured, knowing and
brilliant debut." —Kansas City Star
“Superb.” —Junot Díaz, The New York Times Book Review
Ask a Question About this Product More... |