Country of Origin: A Novel

Product Description

A dazzling debut novel by the prize-winning author of Yellow, set in the unique and exotic nightworld of Tokyo. In this “poignant story of prejudice, betrayal and the search for identity” (
Newsweek International), the trials and tribulations of these three remarkable characters are “at turns trenchantly funny and heartbreakingly sad” (
Publishers Weekly). “[An] elegant and haunting debut” (
Entertainment Weekly),
Country of Origin is a “swirl of action, a whirl of love and sex and race and politics, local and international” (
Chicago Tribune)―a “quiet literary triumph” (
Booklist)

Lisa Countryman is a woman of complex origins. Half-Japanese, adopted by African American parents, she returns to Tokyo, ostensibly to research her thesis on Japan’s “sad, brutal reign of conformity.” When she vanishes, Tom Hurley, who is half-Korean and half-white, is assigned to her case at the American embassy, as is local cop Kenzo Ota, who is 100 percent Japanese but deemed an outsider.

Review

“Touching, wide-ranging, often funny–and never less than compelling.”

About the Author

Don Lee is the author of the novels
The Collective,
Wrack and Ruin, and
Country of Origin, and the story collection
Yellow. He has received an American Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, an O. Henry Award, and a Pushcart Prize. He teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Temple University and splits his time between Philadelphia and Baltimore.