Free Food for Millionaires

by Min Jin Lee

Overview

From the author of the 2017 National Book Award Finalist PACHINKO

NPR Fresh Air Top Ten Books of the Year
• USA Today Top Ten Books of the Year
• The Times (London) Top Ten Books of the Year

From the award-winning author of PACHINKO, a bestselling, "ambitious and compulsively readable" (San Francisco Chronicle) American story of class, society and identity.
The daughter of Korean immigrants, Casey Han has refined diction, a closeted passion for reading the Bible, a popular white boyfriend, and a magna cum laude degree in economics from Princeton, but no job and an addiction to the things she cannot afford in the glittering world of Manhattan. In this critically-acclaimed debut, Min Jin Lee tells not only Casey's story, but also those of her sheltered mother, scarred father, and friends both Korean and Caucasian, exposing the astonishing layers of a community clinging to its old ways and a city packed with struggling haves and have-nots.

Customer Reviews

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538714850
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	06/05/2018
Pages:	624
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.95(d)

About the Author

Min Jin Lee's debut novel, Free Food for Millionaires, was one of the "Top 10 Novels of the Year" for The Times (London), NPR's Fresh Air, and USA Today. Her short fiction has been featured on NPR's Selected Shorts. Her writings have appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, The Times (London), Vogue, Travel+Leisure, Wall Street Journal, New York Times Magazine, and Food & Wine. Her essays and literary criticism have been anthologized widely. She served as a columnist for the Chosun Ilbo, the leading paper of South Korea. She lives in New York with her family.

Editorial Reviews

"Accomplished and engrossing."—New York Times Book Review

"The best novel I've read in a long time. I'm sad to be finished and I desperately miss Casey Han."—SELF

"A noteworthy debut...Lee's take on contemporary intergenerational cultural friction is wide-ranging, sympathetic and well worth reading."—Publishers Weekly

"Ambitious and compulsively readable. She aims for the breadth of Balzac and the moral depth of Middlemarch."—San Francisco Chronicle

"A true page-turner, with a Korean American protagonist and a compelling plot involving the universal clash of cultures, adultery, and class distinction."—Chicago Sun-Times

"Featuring subtly drawn characters and sensitive to the nuances of race and class, FREE FOOD is a first-rate read—a book you finish feeling certain the lives inside will go on long after the final page."—People

"This big, beguiling book has all the distinguishing marks of a Great American novel."—The Times (London)

"Lee draws in the reader with likeably human, multidimensional characters and a subtly shifting, unpredictable plot."—The Washington Post

"An astounding, remarkable, readable debut from a talented writer."—The Washington Times

"A stirring debut novel . . . Not since Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake has an author so exquisitely evoked what it's like to be an immigrant, and more specifically the children of immigrants, in our vastly competitive and socially delineated culture . . . vastly ambitious and mesmerizing...when the novel ends, readers will long for another 560 pages so they can extend their love affair with Casey and Min Jin Lee, her amazingly talented creator."—USA Today

"A sweeping story of first-generation Korean Americans . . . With very broad strokes and great detail, Lee paints colorful three-dimensional characters and outlines intergenerational and cultural struggles brilliantly."—Booklist

"Impressive . . . a detailed vivid tapestry . . . offers us astute insights into the plights, challenges, and successes of a unique generation of new American immigrants."—St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"An immersion into a fully realized and beautifully written world . . . Lee gently but firmly pushes the genre in a more modern direction, and in the process manages to create her own niche in the literary world."—BookPage

"A terrific debut novel . . . reminiscent of another ambitious New York novel about class collision, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities . . .the pleasure of reading this sprawling novel derives from the old-fashioned thrill of watching the wheel of fortune slowly turn for various characters . . . In the Victorian-inflected saga of Casey Han and her friends, Lee has given readers more than just Elizabeth Bennett tricked out in a Korean hanbok, she's tweaked venerable nineteenth-century fictional forms to suit the story of yet another new immigrant group claiming New York City as its own."—Fresh Air, NPR

"New and fresh . . . a fantastically fun story . . . a smart, sassy, wild ride . . . reads like a mix of a slightly less frenetic Jay McInerny and an equally sardonic Tom Perrotta, all wrapped in the fast-paced genre perfected by Tom Wolfe."—Chattanooga Times Free Press

"A big, ambitious first novel . . . Min Jin Lee, who is both wise and clever, deftly stage-manages a vast and varied cast of characters . . . all stumbling in their pursuit of the American dream. She makes the reader eager to discover where their errant quests will lead them."—Lynne Sharon Schwartz, author of The Writing on the Wall

"Echoes of Thackeray's Vanity Fair."—Sacramento Bee

"A terrific look at the American melting pot that assimilates second generations . . . Readers will enjoy this strong character study especially when Min Jin Lee focuses on the Americanization of Casey."—Midwest Book Review

"A big, juicy, coming-of-age novel . . . definitely belongs in this summer's beach bag."—Entertainment Weekly

"Engrossing and illuminating . . . a panoramic portrait of contemporary Korean Americans and their 'white boy' colleagues, lovers, and friends."—Alix Kates Shulman, author of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen and Drinking the Rain

"A terrific writer."—Beverly Hills Courier

"Assimilation. Independence. Love. Betrayal. Class. Race. Sex. It's all in there. And reading FREE FOOD FOR MILLIONAIRES will, in the words of another writer to whom Lee has been compared, be a 'far, far better thing' than you've ever done."—Day to Day, NPR

"A page turner with a trenchant theme."—Washington City Paper

From the Publisher