A Tender Age
by Jacqueline Rose
Mentioned once across 1 show · first heard Jun 2026 on The Ezra Klein Show.
The general take
Gary Shteyngart speaks highly of Chang-Rae Lee's "A Tender Age," calling his mentor "wonderful" and describing the book as Lee's most memoiristic novel to date, with substantial autobiographical elements drawn from Lee's own background. Shteyngart seems genuinely enthusiastic about the project, having noticed an excerpt in The New Yorker.
About
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES , THE BOSTON GLOBE , GOODREADS, AND LITERARY HUB “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.
Who said what
Gary Shteyngart👍 Recommends
…book recommendations from author's students and mentors
“A second book was coming out, I think, in August. And that's by my mentor, Chang-Rae Lee, the wonderful Korean-American writer. A Tender Age, I think is the name of the book. There was an excerpt in The New Yorker. This, I think, is his most memoiristic novel. I think a lot of his own background goes into this.”
The Ezra Klein Show — I Keep Telling People We’re Living in This Dystopian Novelat 32:33
Listener reviews
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