‘Every word makes me ache ... Written with exquisite empathy and grace’ Roxane Gay
‘Singularly beautiful and psychologically harrowing ... One of the best American novels of this century’ Boston Globe
Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys’ choir. At their summer camp, situated in an idyllic and secluded lakeside retreat, Fee grapples with his complicated feelings towards his best friend, Peter. But as Fee comes to learn how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. Yet the actions of the director have vast consequences, and in their wake, Fee blames only himself.
In the years that follow he slowly builds a new life, teaching near his hometown. There, he meets a young student who is the picture of Peter – and is forced to confront the past he believed was gone.
‘Every word makes me ache ... Written with exquisite empathy and grace’ Roxane Gay
‘Singularly beautiful and psychologically harrowing ... One of the best American novels of this century’ Boston Globe
Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys’ choir. At their summer camp, situated in an idyllic and secluded lakeside retreat, Fee grapples with his complicated feelings towards his best friend, Peter. But as Fee comes to learn how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. Yet the actions of the director have vast consequences, and in their wake, Fee blames only himself.
In the years that follow he slowly builds a new life, teaching near his hometown. There, he meets a young student who is the picture of Peter – and is forced to confront the past he believed was gone.
The debut novel, never-before-published in the UK, from bestselling author Alexander Chee, told with ‘the force of a dream and the heft of a life’ (Annie Dillard, Publisher’s Weekly)
Alexander Chee is the bestselling author of the novels The Queen
of the Night and Edinburgh. He is a contributing editor at the New
Republic, an editor at large at Virginia Quarterly Review, and a
critic at large at the Los Angeles Times. His work has appeared in
The Best American Essays 2016, The New York Times Magazine, Slate,
Guernica, and Tin House, among others. He is an associate professor
of English at Dartmouth College.
alexanderchee.net
@alexanderchee
Exquisite … Heavy with portent, the narrative unspools with the
somnambulant, hypnotic heft of a myth hurtling towards its heady
denouement … Achingly beautiful
*Financial Times*
A bold and hard-hitting novel, but one written with sensitivity and
held together with delicately threaded imagery
*Glasgow Herald*
Edinburgh has the force of a dream and the heft of a life
*Annie Dillard*
Impressionistic, palpable, nuanced, beautifully written and
challenging
*Attitude*
Haunting ... Complex ... Sophisticated ... [Chee] says volumes with
just a few incendiary words
*New York Times*
Beautifully imagined and executed ... Profound and poetic … Chee's
is a voice worth listening to
*San Francisco Chronicle*
Alexander Chee gets my vote for the best new novelist I've read in
some time. Edinburgh is moody, dramatic – and pure
*Edmund White*
A coming-of-age novel in the grand Romantic tradition, where
passions run high, Cupid stalks Psyche, and love shares the dance
floor with death … A lovely, nuanced, never predictable portrait of
a creative soul in the throes of becoming
*Washington Post*
Few coming-of-age novels truly stir one’s emotions or lead readers
to consider the trauma of their own lives. Edinburgh does both
*Newsday*
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