by SUEVON LEE | @suevlee
editor@charactermedia.com
Novelist Chang-rae Lee is among 30 finalists for the National Book Critics Circle awards for the best books of 2014 for his dystopian novel, On Such a Full Sea.
The prize, considered one of the most prestigious American literary awards, honors works in six categories: autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, general nonfiction and poetry.
Published by Riverhead Books, On Such a Full Sea – Lee’s fifth novel – takes place in a dystopian future America where urban neighborhoods have become labor colonies. Its protagonist is a 16-year-old Chinese American girl named Fan who sets off from her home colony, known as “B-mor,” in search of the young man she loves when he mysteriously disappears.
The Independent deemed the book “a strange, skillful performance by a novelist who is brave enough to consistently subvert our expectations of narrative continuity,” in a Jan. 2014 review. The book was named one of the best books of 2014 by such outlets as Publishers Weekly, Amazon.com, The Washington Post, NPR and the Christian Science Monitor.
The Korean American Lee is the author of 1995’s Native Speaker; A Gesture Life (1999); Aloft (2004); and 2010’s The Surrendered, which won the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was nominated for the 2011 Pulitzer Price in Fiction.
Lee, 49, teaches creative writing at Princeton University.
The winners of the National Book Critics Circle awards will be announced at a public awards ceremony on Thursday, March 12 at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium. The finalists will also hold a public reading of their works on March 11.
A full list of finalists can be viewed here.
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Photo courtesy of David Levenson/Getty
