Free Food for Millionaires

Category: Book
By (author): Lee, Min Jin
Subject:  FICTION / Asian American
  FICTION / Coming of Age
  FICTION / General
  FICTION / Literary
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: January 2022
Format: Book-paperback
Pages: 736
Size: 7.95in x 5.25in x 1.55in
Our Price:
$ 23.99
Availability:
In stock

Additional Notes

From The Publisher*In this "mesmerizing" novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Pachinko, the Korean-American daughter of first-generation immigrants strives to join Manhattan's inner circle (USA Today).

Meet Casey Han: a strong-willed, Queens-bred daughter of Korean immigrants immersed in a glamorous Manhattan lifestyle she can't afford. Casey is eager to make it on her own, away from the judgements of her parents' tight-knit community, but she soon finds that her Princeton economics degree isn't enough to rid her of ever-growing credit card debt and a toxic boyfriend. When a chance encounter with an old friend lands her a new opportunity, she's determined to carve a space for herself in a glittering world of privilege, power, and wealth-but at what cost?

Set in a city where millionaires scramble for the free lunches the poor are too proud to accept, this sharp-eyed epic of love, greed, and ambition is a compelling portrait of intergenerational strife, immigrant struggle, and social and economic mobility. Addictively readable, Min Jin Lee's bestselling debut Free Food for Millionaires exposes the intricate layers of a community clinging to its old ways in a city packed with haves and have-nots.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.
Review Quote*"Lee's keen eye for class concerns and her confident, muscular writing about the conflicting pulls toward one's cultural heritage and the unknowable, wide- open future make this book a pleasure."-Meg Wolitzer, New York Times bestselling author of The Interestings
Review Quote*"Engrossing and illuminating . . . a panoramic portrait of contemporary Korean Americans and their ‘white boy' colleagues, lovers, and friends."-Alix Kates Shulman, author of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen and Drinking the Rain
Review Quote*"Unfolds in New York in the 1990s with an energetic eventfulness and a sprawling cast that call to mind the literary classics of Victorian England . . . It would be remarkable if she had simply written a long novel that was as easy to devour as a nineteenth-century romance-packed with tales of flouted parental expectations, fluctuating female friendships and rivalries, ephemeral (and longer-lasting) romantic hopes and losses, and high-stakes career gambles. But Lee intensifies her drama by setting it against an unfamiliar backdrop: the tightly knit social world of Korean immigrants, whose children strive to blend into their American foreground without clashing with their distinctive background. It's a feat of coordination and contrast that could kill a chameleon, but Lee pulls it off with conviction."-New York Times Book Review
Review Quote*"Complex and intriguing . . . an exquisite look at life's uncertainties. The beauty of Lee's novel is that it does not focus solely on Casey's sojourn from naïve pride to self-realization, as compelling as that is."-Associated Press
Review Quote*"An expansive story . . . draws the reader with likeably human, multidimensional characters and a subtly shifting, unpredictable plot."-Washington Post
Review Quote*"Mesmerizing...Not since Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake has an author so exquisitely evoked what it's like to be an immigrant."-USA Today
Review Quote*"A terrific debut novel . . . reminiscent of another ambitious New York novel about class collision, Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities . . . the pleasure of reading this sprawling novel derives from the old-fashioned thrill of watching the wheel of fortune slowly turn for various characters . . . In the Victorian-inflected saga of Casey Han and her friends, Lee has given readers more than just Elizabeth Bennet tricked out in a Korean hanbok, she's tweaked venerable nineteenth-century fictional forms to suit the story of yet another new immigrant group claiming New York City as its own."-Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air, NPR
Review Quote*"Lee has updated the Victorian novel of progress to a postmodern, postfeminist world and imagined a character whose circumstances feel universal."-Chicago Tribune
Review Quote*"A first-rate read-a book you finish feeling certain the lives inside will go on long after the final page."-People