A Tender Age

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE BOSTON GLOBE, GOODREADS, LITERARY HUB, AND THE MILLIONS “Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee?”—The 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 From the Pulitzer Prize finalist, a story of guilt, innocence, and a boy on the cusp of adolescence A spellbinding exploration of American 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 American bildungsroman. 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.