Tiller is an average American college student with a good heart but minimal aspirations. Pong Lou is a larger-than-life, wildly creative Chinese American entrepreneur who sees something intriguing in Tiller beyond his bored exterior and takes him under his wing. When Pong brings him along on a boisterous trip across Asia, Tiller is catapulted from ordinary young man to talented protégé, and pulled into a series of ever more extreme and eye-opening experiences that transform his view of the world, of Pong, and of himself. 

In the breathtaking, “precise, elliptical prose” that Chang-rae Lee is known for (The New York Times), the narrative alternates between Tiller’s outlandish, mind-boggling year with Pong and the strange, riveting, emotionally complex domestic life that follows it, as Tiller processes what happened to him abroad and what it means for his future. Rich with commentary on Western attitudes, Eastern stereotypes, capitalism, global trade, mental health, parenthood, mentorship, and more, My Year Abroad is also an exploration of the surprising effects of cultural immersion—on a young American in Asia, on a Chinese man in America, and on an unlikely couple hiding out in the suburbs. Tinged at once with humor and darkness, electric with its accumulating surprises and suspense, My Year Abroad is a novel that only Chang-rae Lee could have written, and one that will be read and discussed for years to come.

“Who is a greater novelist than Chang-rae Lee today?” — Los Angeles Times

“One of our most silken storytellers.” —The Boston Globe 

 “An extraordinary book, acrobatic on the level of the sentence, symphonic across its many movements—and this is a book that moves…My Year Abroad is a wild ride—a caper, a romance, a bildungsroman, and something of a satire of how to get filthy rich in rising Asia.” – Vogue

Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN/Hemingway Award for first fiction; A Gesture Life; Aloft; The Surrendered, winner of the Dayton Peace Prize and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and On Such a Full Sea. Selected by The New Yorker as one of the “20 Writers for the 21st Century,” Chang-rae Lee is Professor professor in the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University and the a Shinhan Distinguished Visiting Professor at Yonsei University.

The Stacks is a podcast about books and the people who read them, hosted by Traci Thomas, a lover of all things literature. The Stacks uses books as a framework to discuss our cultural understanding of race, gender, politics, and what it means to be alive. The Stacks is also a place to simply gush over books and authors. In the show's two and a half year history, The Stacks has been thrilled to welcome a wide range of guests to the podcast including: Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, Bakari Sellers, Samantha Irby, Lori Gottlieb and Kiese Laymon. Traci was born and raised in Oakland, CA and now lives in LA with her husband and identical twin sons. You can find Traci Thomas at  @TheStacksPod_ on Twitter, @TheStacksPod on Bookstagram, in addition to her podcast The Stacks.

Skylit: My Year Abroad by Chang-rae Lee, with Traci Thomas