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The Surrendered |  | Author: Chang-rae Lee
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Rating:  43 reviews
Sales Rank: 27866
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 480
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.5
ISBN: 1594489769
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9781594489761
Publication Date: March 9, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: Chang-Rae Lee on The Surrendered
 The inspiration for The Surrendered has its roots in a project I worked on more than twenty years ago, while I was still in college. I was taking a seminar on modern Korean history, and I decided that I would conduct an interview with my father to fulfill the writing assignment, conceiving a reporter-at-large-type piece that would offer personal testimony and narrative set against a historical backdrop. I wasn't sure if he would agree. My father was twelve years old on the eve of the Korean War, and although over the years I had asked him a number of times about his experiences, his responses were typically vague and hurried; he never seemed to want to talk about that time, only briefly mentioning that his sister had died during the war from an untreated bout of pneumonia. But since I was taking a course with a special focus on Korea, he agreed to speak in more detail about that period.
My father's family was originally from Pyongyang, now the capital of North Korea, and they had joined the throngs of refugees who were heading south in an attempt to get behind the line of American forces. He first recounted a story about his favorite older cousin, who was pregnant and just about to give birth as the rest of the extended family was frantically packing up and leaving. My father was dispatched to tell his cousin that everyone was departingâexplosions could be heard in the distanceâyet even though she and her husband desperately wanted to go, she had already started her labors. She couldn’t be moved. Everybody soon left, and that was last time the cousin and her husband were seen alive; to this day no one knows what happened to them, whether they perished or survived the war and ended up living in North Korea.
Telling that story of his cousin seemed to break the grip of something on my father. He recounted again that his sister had died of pneumonia during the refugee march, then added, casually, that in fact his younger brother had died during their travels, too. This disclosure surprised me. I knew that he had lost a brother, this from asking him, as children often will, about how many siblings he had, matching the number against my uncles and aunts, but I remembered his saying that his brother had died in a "subway accident." I didn't think there was a subway in either Pyongyang or Seoul during his childhood, so I asked him when his brother had died, and how.
My father told me that in fact his brother had been killed not by a subway car but by a boxcar of a train full of refugees. They were among the hundreds who filled the cars. The car holding the rest of their family was packed tight, so he and his brother had to sleep on top of the boxcar. In the middle of the night the train halted violently, and his brother, who was eight years old, fell off, the train then lurching forward for a short distance. My father jumped down and went back and found his brother, whose leg had been amputated by the wheels of the train. My father carried him back to the car, to the rest of their family, as the bloodâand his lifeâran out of him.
I've been haunted by that story since I heard it, not only by the horror of the accident but also by the picture of my father as a boy, a boy who had to experience his brother's death so directly and egregiously. I was struck, too, by how unperturbed my father had always seemed to me, this cheerful, optimistic man who certainly didn't appear to be haunted by anything. But of course this was not quite true. The events of the war had stayed with him, and always would.
In recent years I began to consider writing a novel about that time, and what happened to my father and his brother kept coming back to me. I finally decided to try to write that scene, wondering whether a larger story might be instituted. Naturally the details changed quite drastically as I began to write, the story expanding in every direction, developing its own world and aims, and soon enough it was not my father's story at all. But the kernel of what had happened grew to become the first chapter of The Surrendered, which for me is not so much a war novel as it is a story concerned with the effects of mass conflict on the human psyche and spirit, the private odysseys that those who have experienced conflict must endure.
(Photo of Chang-Rae Lee © David Burnett)
Product Description
The bestselling, award-winning writer of Native Speaker, A Gesture Life, and Aloft returns with his biggest, most ambitious novel yet: a spellbinding story of how love and war echo through an entire lifetime.
With his three critically acclaimed novels, Chang-rae Lee has established himself as one of the most talented writers of contemporary literary fiction. Now, with The Surrendered, Lee has created a book that amplifies everything we've seen in his previous works, and reads like nothing else. It is a brilliant, haunting, heartbreaking story about how love and war inalterably change the lives of those they touch.
June Han was only a girl when the Korean War left her orphaned; Hector Brennan was a young GI who fled the petty tragedies of his small town to serve his country. When the war ended, their lives collided at a Korean orphanage where they vied for the attentions of Sylvie Tanner, the beautiful yet deeply damaged missionary wife whose elusive love seemed to transform everything. Thirty years later and on the other side of the world, June and Hector are reunited in a plot that will force them to come to terms with the mysterious secrets of their past, and the shocking acts of love and violence that bind them together.
As Lee unfurls the stunning story of June, Hector, and Sylvie, he weaves a profound meditation on the nature of heroism and sacrifice, the power of love, and the possibilities for mercy, salvation, and surrendering oneself to another. Combining the complex themes of identity and belonging of Native Speaker and A Gesture Life with the broad range, energy, and pure storytelling gifts of Aloft, Chang-rae Lee has delivered his most ambitious, exciting, and unforgettable work yet. It is a mesmerizing novel, elegantly suspenseful and deeply affecting.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 43
 Epic novel about war and remembrance February 18, 2010
sb-lynn (Santa Barbara, California United States)
67 out of 70 found this review helpful
Short summary and review - no spoilers.
This novel jumps around in time and place - from 1930's Manchuria to 1980's New York and Italy. We start off in Korea in the early 1950's during the Korean War. We are introduced to one of the main characters in the book - a young girl we come to know as June, who is one of the many refugees who are fleeing their homes. She is only 11 years old, and seeking shelter, food and safety for her and her younger siblings.
This first chapter is just an extraordinary opening - and it is one of the most harrowing descriptions I've ever read of the refugee/wartime experience.
Other key characters include Hector, an American soldier who joins the army to get away from his small town after a tragic event involving his family. Hector is a wonderful character - he is a noble, decent man put in war time situations that could break anyone's spirit. We also meet Sylvie Tanner, the daughter of missionaries, who ends up in Korea just after the war taking care of Korean orphans with her husband. It is here that Sylvie meets up with Hector and June.
We know from the early chapters that take place in 1980s New York that June is trying to locate her her son and that she wants Hector to go with her. By going back and forth between time and place, we can see how early horrific wartime experiences changed their lives forever .
There is a tremendous amount of foreshadowing in this novel - in seemingly every chapter we are made aware of secrets and horrors from each character's past, and it is only at the end when we find out the whole story. In some ways this felt a bit manipulative, but not overly so and it did add to the book being a page-turner, especially towards the end. (And there is a good twist for people who like this sort of thing, and I do.)
This book is not for those who are squeamish about violence and tales of war. For anyone else, and for those looking for a big epic book that will transport you to several other (dark) times and places, this is for you.
Recommended.
Beautiful language and engrossing plot May 4, 2010
Trish D'imperio (Oneonta, New York USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This amazing novel is about three people who meet at an orphanage in Korea right after the war there. These three characters could not be more different, but each of their stories is wonderful. June is an orphan who has lost her family in the war. Hector is an American soldier who decides after the war to stay in Korea and work in the orphange, and Sylvie is a missionary wife whose love Hector and June compete for. The book goes back and forth from their childhoods to their time at the orphanage and afterward. The bulk of the novel takes places in the 80s, when June, who is dying, takes Hector to Europe in attempt to find her estranged son.
The book contains some extremely descriptive and intense depictions of the horrors of war (rape, torture, etc.), so pass on this novel if you can't handle violence.
If you're looking for a really engrossing read, give this one a try. The language is incredibly beautiful and poetic, and the characters' stories are truly riveting.
Great Literature at its Best March 20, 2010
Montessori Librarian (Dallas, TX)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Lee's superlative writing makes this tragic novel about the profound and inescapable effects of war a must-read for fans of great literature. The story is revealed through masterfully crafted flashbacks to the events that shaped the lives of the three main characters. June Han's life is ruled by her struggle for survival that began with the horrific loss of her entire family during the Korean War. Haunted by guilt over his father's death, American Hector Brennan enlists in the Korean War, unwittingly setting his life on a never-ending path of self-loathing and destruction. Never able to measure up to the ideals set by her missionary parents, Sylvie Tanner is doomed to a life of failure following their murder by Japanese soldiers in Manchuria. Unable to escape the horror and devastation of the past, all three spend their lives searching for redemption that will never come. Lee's haunting, lyrical prose unerringly conveys the tormented thoughts and feelings of the characters. The Surrendered is a poignant novel that will leave you unsettled, yet yearning for more.
Stunning, hearbreaking...and impossible to put down March 22, 2010
Daffy Du (Del Mar, CA United States)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Chang-rae Lee belongs to a small pantheon of authors whose name alone is enough for me to buy their books. Ever since I read Native Speaker, I've been drawn to his utterly original perspectives, his acute insights into human nature and his masterful use of language.
So it was a foregone conclusion that I'd jump at the chance to read his latest novel, The Surrendered. From the cover blurb alone, it was also clear that it was not going to be a light, entertaining read. Exploring the enduring, devastating effects of war, with three profoundly damaged people at its heart, the book promised to be wrenching as well as compelling.
Hector Brennan is eking out a meager, largely drunken existence when June Singer, the one person from his past whom he least wants to see, comes limping back into his life. June is dying, her body wracked with cancer, and before she passes, she wants to find her son, Nicholas, the product of a single encounter with Hector 20-some years earlier. Nicholas is gallivanting around Europe, occasionally sending her notes requesting ever larger sums of money. June and Hector's lives first intersected in Korea after the Korean War, when Hector spent several years working at an orphanage where the child June had been cast ashore, the only surviving member of her family. Both had been deeply scarred by their wartime experiences, and in different ways, both came to love the same woman, Sylvie Tanner, who arrived with her husband from America to run the orphanage.
The narrative jumps back and forth in time, sometimes horrific, sometimes hopeful, always suspenseful, offering the same kind of voyeuristic fascination as the wreckage of a car accident; Lee never shies away from graphic depictions of the atrocities each of the characters experienced. Hector, an accomplished street fighter, is transfigured by the war, reduced to little more than a lonely shell of a man. Sylvie is as fragile as she is beautiful and harbors her own demons, which lodged in her soul in Manchuria in the 1930s, where her parents were missionaries. June is a particularly interesting character, iron willed, antisocial, violent, cunning and yet enormously needy.
Driven by these complex characters, their secrets, and their urge to self-destruct, and probing issues of guilt, love and betrayal, The Surrendered is the kind of deeply affecting book that will stay with you a long, long time.
Five stars for a powerful, sometimes harrowing story, beautifully told by a master. (Not, however, for the squeamish.)
The Truth Hurts April 5, 2010
Eileen Granfors (Santa Clarita, CA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Chang-Rae Lee's "The Surrendered" s a horrific tale of human cruelty with a small measure of redemption and love.
The book covers decades and continents. I liked the beginning, the middle, and the end (it was some of the "filler chapters" that hindered the flow). I felt that the Korean incidents were the heart of the book, the most interesting and the most horrifying. I felt the New Jersey portion and Dora weighed the book down with sidestory. The Italian section broke my heart. I gave the book 5 stars for the difficulty of speaking of the unbearable, for telling this story in a convincing, unflinching way.
The interwoven stories of June, a Korean orphan; Hector, an American GI; and Sylvie, a missionary shows us what it means to suffer greatly. Each of the main characters must cope with the bestial behavior of humans during and after war's ravages.
Lee's prose is glorious even as he describes the pitiful and the disgusting. The plot is convincing. It is only the reality of man's inhumanity to man that makes this book so hard to continue reading to the end. His tale is not for the romantic.
"The Surrendered" will ask you to surrender your ideas of war as glory and watch the descent of otherwise good people into craven, selfish creatures. Steel yourself to read this book at intervals.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 43
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