A Tender Age

'Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee?' Los Angeles Times

'He has redefined not only what it means to be American, but the fabric of the Great American Novel itself.' Jhumpa Lahiri

‘Chang-rae Lee can do no wrong in my mind – I devoured Lee’s last novel, My Year Abroad, and I can’t wait for this one.’ LitHub

From the Pulitzer Prize shortlisted novelist, a story of guilt, innocence, and a boy on the cusp of adolescence

‘Lee’s latest novel is a tale of almosts: a family of working-class immigrants almost living the American dream; an 11-year-old boy, almost transitioning into adulthood and straddling the worlds of his doting Korean parents and a semi-feral gaggle of neighborhood kids.’ New York Times Most Anticipated Books of 2026

A spellbinding exploration of masculinity and family dynamics as seen through the confused eyes of a prepubescent child of immigrants, A Tender Age joins the rich tradition of the coming-of-age novel. The natural descendent of characters like Huckleberry Finn and Holden Caufield, Korean-American Jeon-Gi is torn between competing ideas of himself. At home, his working-class parents dote on him. Outside, he is part of a roving pack of kids with dominion over a derelict baseball field, weedy parking lot, and rusty jungle gym. Getting into and out of trouble is all-consuming. But the summer he turns eleven, he becomes embroiled in a staggering series of events reverberating far beyond himself and his family.

Devastating in its emotional precision, A Tender Age captures a family and community in striking distance of the American dream, and a young person on the precipice of adult knowledge, looking at his own culpability and looking away - then thinking about it for the rest of his life.