Coming Soon

By Lisa Lee

On Sale: Mar 31, 2026
Page Count: 288 pages
Publisher: Algonquin Books
ISBN-13: 9781643757254

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$39.00 CAD

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Hardcover $29.00 $39.00 CAD
ebook $14.99 $19.99 CAD
Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $27.99
Trade Paperback (Large Print) $31.00 $41.00 CAD

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In this captivated novel, a young Korean American woman attempts to distance herself from her family in order to forge an authentic future—but a violent act forces her to see that she’ll always be implicated with their actions and they with hers.

“A pulsating signal from the liminal zone where the American dream meets the American nightmare.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer

Jane and her brother Kevin Kim embody the model minority myth until both depart from the path: Jane drops out of law school without telling her parents, and her brother Kevin gives up his promising tennis career and cuts himself off from the family. Their parents feel equally lost in a country that claims to support them and yet in which they can find no place. When Kevin goes missing, no one recognizes his absence as the warning sign it is, until it erupts in a moment that indicts them all.

Both deeply serious and absurdly funny, American Han is a story about striving and assimilation, difficult love, and family fidelity. A searing and probing portrait that challenges assumptions about the immigrant experience, Lisa Lee’s debut introduces a powerful new voice on the literary landscape.

“A fantastic sleight-of-hand. Lee makes us look one way while all sorts of stuff comes into focus around us. This is a novel about a singular and eccentric family but yields understanding about so much more. A beautiful, important novel that will leave a mark.” —Percival Everett, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of James

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Lisa Lee is the recipient of the Marianne Russo Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction, and a Pushcart Prize. She has received other fellowships and awards from Kundiman, Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, Jentel Artist Residency, and the Korea Foundation. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, VIDA, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Lee holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles and grew up in Napa, California.

"Tone perfect. To say that this book is smart is an understatement. The whole performs as a fantastic sleight-of-hand. Lee makes us look one way while all sorts of stuff comes into focus around us. This is a novel about a singular and eccentric family but yields understanding about so much more. Large issues abound here. This is a beautiful, important novel that will leave a mark."
Percival Everett, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of James
"AMERICAN HAN is a pulsating signal from the liminal zone where the American dream meets the American nightmare. It’s an SOS from the so-called good immigrants, dwelling in this zone where only their successes are visible but not their distresses. In this deeply perceptive novel, Lisa Lee excels at rolling up the sleeves of those immigrants and revealing the cuts and wounds, inflicted by others…and by themselves."
Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer
“I was captivated by this voice— so funny, blunt, probing, wrenching, moving. Lee’s searchingly honest portrayal of each character here means no one is spared, and it means no one is dropped, either. What a powerful examination of family, society, self.”
Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
“American Han is often hilarious, often gutting, and always deeply humane. These unforgettable characters will echo in my mind long after I’ve become a prickly immigrant elder myself.”
Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy
“Narrated with such an assured voice that the complexities of racism, grief, class striving, violent love, and generational trauma appear with a stunning clarity. Only a magician could create from these topics such a wildly pleasurable, funny, and frightening novel. American Han is an unforgettable portrait of a family in crisis, and I loved every minute of it.”
Shruti Swamy, author of The Archer
“American Han is the best debut I’ve read in years. This unafraid novel is as full of mystery, humor, and hard-won knowledge as family life itself.”
Lisa Locascio, author of Open Me
“American Han shook me to my core. Gutting in its quietest moments and heartbreakingly familiar in its loudest conflicts, this book is a gripping portrait of the cost of assimilation into American life. Lisa Lee expertly holds us to this tense reckoning, forcing us to confront the brutality that shapes the racial fabric of the U.S. and the uncertain future in which we all play a part, however unsettling and true.”
Muriel Leung, Lambda award-winning author of How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster

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Lisa Lee

About the Author

Lisa Lee is the recipient of the Marianne Russo Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction, and a Pushcart Prize. She has received other fellowships and awards from Kundiman, Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, Jentel Artist Residency, and the Korea Foundation. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, VIDA, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Lee holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles and grew up in Napa, California.

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