Lee Chang-rae publishes first fantasy novel

Renowned Korean-American writer Lee Chang-rae has ventured into the genre of fantasy fiction with his latest novel, “On Such a Full Sea.”

The novel, published in the U.S. earlier this month, is set in a dystopian future where a socially stratified society ― consisting of elite Charter villages, middle-class labor colonies and the wild and impoverished “open counties” ― dominates its people.

Fan, the novel’s 16-year-old protagonist, is a fish-tank diver in the community of B-Mor (once known as Baltimore), where laborers of Chinese descent dedicate their lives working for the Charters, the wealthy American elites of the world.

When her lover Reg suddenly disappears one day, Fan makes a bold decision to leave her relatively safe community and enter the wild “counties” to find Reg.

The abrupt departure of Fan creates a stir in B-Mor, as no one has ever dared to leave before. Through her journey, Fan discovers many details and truths about what characterizes and dominates her world. 

The story is narrated by an unnamed collective voice that presumably represents all of B-Mor. In an interview with an American media outlet, Lee said that he deliberately chose this style in order to give more freedom to the story: “This would be quite a different book in which the narration moves in all these different directions.”

The novel has received favorable reviews from major U.S. news outlets. The New York Times praised the novel, saying: “Lee has always been preoccupied by the themes of hope and betrayal, by the tensions that arise in small lives in the midst of great social change. His marvelous new book, which imagines a future after the breakdown of our society, takes on those concerns with his customary mastery of quiet detail ― and a touch of the fantastic.”

The title of the novel is taken from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” in which Brutus declares: “There is a tide in the affairs of men / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; / Omitted, all the voyage of their life / Is bound in shallows and in miseries. / On such a full sea are we now afloat, / And we must take the current when it serves, / Or lose our ventures.”

Lee Chang-rae was born in Seoul and immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 3. Lee graduated from Yale University and worked as a Wall Street financial analyst for a year before becoming a full-time writer. He is currently a professor of creative writing at Princeton University.

He won the prestigious PEN/Hemingway Award for his 1995 debut novel “Native Speaker” featuring a Korean-American man as its protagonist. In 1999, Lee was chosen as one of the “20 Writers for the 21st Century” by the New Yorker.

His other works include “A Gesture Life,” “Aloft” and “The Surrendered,” which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2011. “On Such a Full Sea” is Lee’s fifth novel.

By Sohn Ji-young (jiyoung.sohn@heraldcorp.com)