Change of pace

摘要

Few American novelists delineate their characters as adeptly as Chang-rae Lee. He gave life to kindly, withdrawn Doc Hata in "A Gesture Life" and the emotionally stunted Henry Park, pulled between his ancestral Korea and native United States in "Native Speaker", through their imaginations: they think therefore they are. He expanded to a broader canvas (love, war) in "The Surrendered", but remained a writer of conventionally realistic fiction. Mr Lee's new book marks a profound departure. "On Such a Full Sea" is set in a not-too-distant future, after environmental degradation has rendered much of China uninhabitable, and America has stratified into three classes: the cosseted wealthy in their well-protected "charter villages"; descendants of displaced Chinese who inhabit abandoned and cleverly renamed American cities (B-Mor for Baltimore, D-Troy for Detroit); and everyone else, living in the lawless "open counties". Around Mr Lee's dystopian society hang shadows of Neal Stephenson and Cormac McCarthy; around his resourceful teenage protagonist hangs the much larger shadow of "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins.