A Tender Age.jpg
A Tender Age.jpg

A Tender Age: A Novel by Chang-rae Lee

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Hardcover:

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

“A tour de force… One of contemporary American literature’s major chroniclers of manhood.” —The Atlantic

"[A] knockout... Lee reinvents himself with each book." —The Boston Globe

“Moving… a classic bildungsroman.” —The New York Times Book Review

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

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. 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.

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

“A tour de force… One of contemporary American literature’s major chroniclers of manhood.” —The Atlantic

"[A] knockout... Lee reinvents himself with each book." —The Boston Globe

“Moving… a classic bildungsroman.” —The New York Times Book Review

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

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. 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.

  • Publisher: Riverhead Books

    Title: A Tender Age: A Novel

    Author: Chang-rae Lee

    On Sale Date: August 11, 2026

    ISBN 13: 979-8-2170-4844-1

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $30.00

    BISAC: Fiction / Literary; Coming of Age

    Page Count: 368

    Dimensions: 5-1/2 in W | 8-1/4 in H

    Weight: 15.7 oz

  • Chang-rae Lee is the author of six novels, including Native Speaker, winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award, and The Surrendered, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has earned him the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Award of Merit, and he currently teaches writing at Stanford University. Widely regarded as one of the defining voices in contemporary American fiction, Lee has spent his career examining identity, family, and the immigrant experience with rare precision.

  • Critics and fellow bestselling authors are calling it moving, redefining, and masterful:

    • “A tour de force… One of contemporary American literature’s major chroniclers of manhood.” —The Atlantic

    • "[A] knockout... Lee reinvents himself with each book." —The Boston Globe

    • “Moving… a classic bildungsroman.” —The New York Times Book Review

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

This book is for you if

  • You’ve read Huckleberry Finn or The Catcher in the Rye and want to see that tradition made new.

  • You’re drawn to novels about immigrant families balancing two worlds at once.

  • You want a story that turns one fateful summer into a lifetime’s reckoning.

  • You appreciate fiction that finds the profound inside an ordinary childhood.

  • You’ve followed Chang-rae Lee’s award-winning career and are ready for his next novel.

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