A Gesture Life

Chang-Rae Lee (born July 29, 1965, in South Korea) is a Korean-American novelist whose debut novel Native Speaker (1995) won the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, followed by notable works like A Gesture Life (1999), The Surrendered (2010, Dayton Literary Peace Prize and Pulitzer finalist), and On Such a Full Sea (2014). He explores themes of identity, assimilation, and immigrant experiences, and teaches creative writing at Stanford University.