Hailed as The Awl’s 2012’s novel to anticipate, this glorious debut stars hippie detectives, a singular city, and an MFA student on the run. On a residential Bay Area block struggling with the collision of gentrifier condos and longtime residents, stymied recent MFA grad Philip Kim is sleeping the night away when bullets fly through a window in his apartment building and end up killing one of his neighbors. Philip only learns about the murder the next day when bored and Googling himself. But when he gets caught up in the investigation and becomes the focus of an elaborate, violent scheme, he will learn far more than he ever wanted to about his former four-eggs-at-a-time borrowing neighbor Dolores Stone, aka “The Grey Beaver,” and her shocking connections to an underworld only a city like this one could create. Siddhartha “Sid” Finch, a homicide detective bitter about everything except his gorgeous wife, and his phlegmatic, pock-marked partner Jim Kim, land the case. Sid and Jim race after Philip through a menacing, unknowable San Francisco fending off militant surfers, vaguely European cafes, and aggressive Advanced Creative Writing students as they all try to figure out just who’s causing trouble in this city they love to hate. Exceedingly unique, pulsing with vigor and heart, and loaded with fierce, fresh language, The Dead Do Not Improve confirms Jay Caspian Kang as a true American original as obsessed with surfing and surviving as with the power of unforgettable storytelling.

The Dead Do Not Improve: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Kang, Jay Caspian

United States

Hogarth

FROM EMMY-NOMINATED AUTHOR FOR VICE NEWS PIECE "NATIONAL ANTHEM PROTESTS ARE SPREADING TO HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL TEAMS" “Loopy, hilarious, neo-noir novel… an extremely smart, funny debut, with moments of haunting beauty.” —Boston Globe Exceedingly unique, pulsing with vigor and heart, and loaded with fierce, fresh language, The Dead Do Not Improve confirms Jay Caspian Kang as a true American original. When struggling writer Philip Kim is dragged into a complex mystery after his neighbor is murdered, Sid Finch, a homicide detective bitter about everything except his gorgeous wife, and his phlegmatic, pockmarked partner, Jim Kim, land the case. Philip becomes the baffled focus of an elaborate, violent scheme that seems tied to his neighbor's murder, and the cops think he might be involved. With an intelligent narrative voice that that moves effortlessly between hilarity, satire, poignancy, and madcap digressions, Kang has written a trippy, self-aware novel obsessed with the Virginia Tech massacre, surfing, and identity. Now with Extra Libris material, including an essay from Jay Caspian Kang

Humor & Entertainment

Humor

Random House Publishing Group

The Loneliest Americans

Product Description 
A riveting blend of family history and original reportage that explores—and reimagines—Asian American identity in a Black and white worldNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR • “A smart, vulnerable, and incisive exploration of what it means for this brilliant and honest writer—a child of Korean immigrants—to assimilate and aspire while being critical of his membership in his community of origin, in his political tribe, and in America.”—Min Jin Lee, author of Pachinko 
In 1965, a new immigration law lifted a century of restrictions against Asian immigrants to the United States. Nobody, including the lawmakers who passed the bill, expected it to transform the country’s demographics. But over the next four decades, millions arrived, including Jay Caspian Kang’s parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They came with almost no understanding of their new home, much less the history of “Asian America” that was supposed to define them.\nThe Loneliest Americans is the unforgettable story of Kang and his family as they move from a housing project in Cambridge to an idyllic college town in the South and eventually to the West Coast. Their story unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Asian America, as millions more immigrants, many of them working-class or undocumented, stream into the country. At the same time, upwardly mobile urban professionals have struggled to reconcile their parents’ assimilationist goals with membership in a multicultural elite—all while trying to carve out a new kind of belonging for their own children, who are neither white nor truly “people of color.”\nKang recognizes this existential loneliness in himself and in other Asian Americans who try to locate themselves in the country’s racial binary. There are the businessmen turning Flushing into a center of immigrant wealth; the casualties of the Los Angeles riots; the impoverished parents in New York City who believe that admission to the city’s exam schools is the only way out; the men’s right’s activists on Reddit ranting about intermarriage; and the handful of protesters who show up at Black Lives Matter rallies holding “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power” signs. Kang’s exquisitely crafted book brings these lonely parallel climbers together amid a wave of anti-Asian violence. In response, he calls for a new form of immigrant solidarity—one rooted not in bubble tea and elite college admissions but in the struggles of refugees and the working class. 
 Review 
“Much of the book’s texture is supplied by the character of Jay Kang, who bristles at the prospect of being a character at all. . . . His perpetual self-doubt makes the book crackle with life. . . . The lasting achievement of 
The Loneliest Americans is that it prompts Asian Americans to think about identity in a framework other than likeness. It asks us to make meaning in ways beyond looking out for our own.” 
—The New Yorker\n“Kang combines his personal family history with deft reportage in a provocative and sweeping examination of racial identity, belonging and family.” 
—Time\n“ 
The Loneliest Americans dares readers to push beyond their comfort zones and deconstruct the mythology of American identity.” 
—LitHub\n“Provocative . . . Of the books in this column, it’s the one I can’t shake, the most unsettling, and certainly least lovable, by design. It’s also the hardest to put down. . . . [Kang] does not want to speak for the scope of Asian America, but he does have a lot to say about how a sense of self can be relayed, assembled and diluted. . . . It’s a messy, frustrating, thoughtful, confusing, illuminating argument—all at once.” 
—Chicago Tribune\n“[ 
The Loneliest Americans] is an invitation to think harder and move beyond the existing racial taxonomies . . . Kang may not have all the answers to help us ‘solve race,’ but he does something as important: he asks the uncomfortable questions.” 
—The Brooklyn Rail\n“From courtrooms to classrooms, Reddit t

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Crown

A “provocative and sweeping” (Time) blend of family history and original reportage that explores—and reimagines—Asian American identity in a Black and white world\n“[Kang’s] exploration of class and identity among Asian Americans will be talked about for years to come.”—Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)\nONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, Mother Jones\nIn 1965, a new immigration law lifted a century of restrictions against Asian immigrants to the United States. Nobody, including the lawmakers who passed the bill, expected it to transform the country’s demographics. But over the next four decades, millions arrived, including Jay Caspian Kang’s parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They came with almost no understanding of their new home, much less the history of “Asian America” that was supposed to define them.\nThe Loneliest Americans is the unforgettable story of Kang and his family as they move from a housing project in Cambridge to an idyllic college town in the South and eventually to the West Coast. Their story unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Asian America, as millions more immigrants, many of them working-class or undocumented, stream into the country. At the same time, upwardly mobile urban professionals have struggled to reconcile their parents’ assimilationist goals with membership in a multicultural elite—all while trying to carve out a new kind of belonging for their own children, who are neither white nor truly “people of color.”\nKang recognizes this existential loneliness in himself and in other Asian Americans who try to locate themselves in the country’s racial binary. There are the businessmen turning Flushing into a center of immigrant wealth; the casualties of the Los Angeles riots; the impoverished parents in New York City who believe that admission to the city’s exam schools is the only way out; the men’s right’s activists on Reddit ranting about intermarriage; and the handful of protesters who show up at Black Lives Matter rallies holding “Yellow Peril Supports Black Power” signs.\nKang’s exquisitely crafted book brings these lonely parallel climbers together and calls for a new immigrant solidarity—one rooted not in bubble tea and elite college admissions but in the struggles of refugees and the working class.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kang, Jay Caspian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kang, Jay Caspian

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kang, Jay Caspian. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Dead Do Not Improve: A Novel

The Dead Do Not Improve: A Novel

The Loneliest Americans

The Loneliest Americans