Alexander Chee: Books and Written Work

National Bestseller "This book is a glorious performance . . . Enveloping, seductive." --Karen Russell From a writer praised by Junot Díaz as "the fire, in my opinion, and the light," a mesmerizing novel that follows one woman's rise from circus rider to courtesan to world-renowned diva Lilliet Berne is a sensation of the Paris Opera, a legendary soprano with every accolade except an original role, every singer's chance at immortality. When one is finally offered to her, she realizes with alarm that the libretto is based on a hidden piece of her past. Only four could have betrayed her: one is dead, one loves her, one wants to own her. And one, she hopes, never thinks of her at all.    As she mines her memories for clues, she recalls her life as an orphan who left the American frontier for Europe and was swept up into the glitzy, gritty world of Second Empire Paris. In order to survive, she transformed herself from hippodrome rider to courtesan, from empress's maid to debut singer, all the while weaving a complicated web of romance, obligation, and political intrigue.     Featuring a cast of characters drawn from history,The Queen of the Nightfollows Lilliet as she moves ever closer to the truth behind the mysterious opera and the role that could secure her reputation -- or destroy her with the secrets it reveals.   

From the author of The Queen of the Night, an essay collection exploring his education as a man, writer, and activist--and how we form our identities in life and in art. As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as "masterful" by Roxane Gay, "incomparable" by Junot Díaz, and "incendiary" by the New York Times. With How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, his first collection of nonfiction, he's sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well.   How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation's history, including his father's death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing--Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley--the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump.   By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.

A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year Winner of the James Michener/Copernicus Society Fellowship Prize Lambda Literary Foundation Editor's Choice Award   "Incomparable . . . because of its bravery, its wisdom, its vitality, and because it's a novel that never stops haunting." --Junot Díaz "[Chee] says volumes with just a few incendiary words." --New York Times   "Arresting . . . profound and poetic . . . Chee's voice is worth listening to." --San Francisco Chronicle   "Alexander Chee gets my vote for the best new novelist I've read in some time. Edinburgh is moody, dramatic--and pure." --Edmund White   Twelve-year-old Fee is a shy Korean American boy and a newly named section leader of the first sopranos in his local boys' choir. But when Fee learns how the director treats his section leaders, he is so ashamed he says nothing of the abuse, not even when Peter, his best friend, is in line to be next. When the director is arrested, Fee tries to forgive himself for his silence. But when Peter takes his own life, Fee blames only himself. In the years that follow he slowly builds a new life, teaching near his hometown. There he meets a young student who is the picture of Peter and is forced to confront the past he believed was gone. Told with "the force of a dream and the heft of a life,"* Edinburgh marked Chee "as a major talent whose career will bear watching" (Publishers Weekly).   "A coming-of-age tale in the grand Romantic tradition, where passions run high, Cupid stalks Psyche, and love shares the dance floor with death . . . A lovely, nuanced, never predictable portrait of a creative soul in the throes of becoming." --Washington Post