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"A novel of extraordinary beauty and pain...nothing less llian brilliant" —FrederickBnsch

"Widi echoes of Ralph Ellison, Chang-rae Lee's extraordinaiy debut speaks for another kind of invisible man: tlie Asian immigrant in America...a revelatory work of fiction." —Vogue

In NativeSpeaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park Park has spent his entire life trying to become a tnie American—a native speaker. But even as die essence of his adopted countiy continues to elude liim. Iiis Korean heritage seems to drift furtherand further away.

Parks harsh Korean upbringing has taught liim to liide liis emotions, to remember everything he learns, and most of all to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped liim as a natural spy.

But tlie very attributes that help hiin to excel in liis profession put a strain on his marriage to his American wife and stand in die way of his coming to terms widi his young son’s death. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American polidcian, his very identity is tested. and he must figurę out who he is amid not only die conflicts widiin liimself but also within the ethnic and polidcal tensions of die New York City streets.

Nańve Speaker is a story of cultural alienation. It is about fathers and sous. about the desire to connect with the world radier than stand apart from it. about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.

SOUTH EAST ASIAN IMMIGRATION

■    najpierw do Kanady jako robotnicy do budowy kolei

■    przedostali się do US

BHARATI MUKHERJEE (1940) is an award-winning Indian-boru American writer. She is currently a professor in the department of English at die Universitv of California. Berkeley.

“A Wife’s Story”

is an excellent example of encounters between cultures presented in a narrative of encounters between women and men.

It is a fascinating stoiy because it presents die surprise of role reversal and because of the sense of a dramatic presentadon that permeates the story. It is the wife. not the husband, who has come to America and who is knowledgeable about this new home. Panna is the guide and often die protector for her husband who is visiting her. And her story is constandy dramatic. It begins widi her in a dieatre and every episode diat follows is carefully situated in a stage-like setting widi set actors.

The story also contains echoes of the memory and nostalgia for the past that play a significant role in the writings of many South Asian-Americans. Tliis memory and nostalgia for the landscape of places and people of the writers' childhood is often juxtaposed widi the excitement and challenge of their new life and tlie unfamiliar landscape of die people and places of the U.S. It is interesting to explore how Mukheijee uses these two strands in this stoiy, bringing one or die other—memory or the excitement of novelty—into the foreground to present her characteis and to bnild the circular, winding paltem of her story.

■    Maxime, the naiTator, attempts to do sth else with die story - it’s different

■    Aunt - punished; pregnant when he was away; raped

■    By the villagers - ride a horse. destroy fumiture

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