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Let’s get this out of the way: “My Year Abroad” is not Chang-rae Lee’s best novel. Not even his second best. But can we agree that even Lee’s worst novel would be better than most authors’ best efforts?
The Korean American author, whose first novel, “Native Speaker,” was nominated for a National Book Award and his third novel, “The Surrendered,” for a Pulitzer Prize, long ago established his bona fides as a writer whose attention to identity and perspective place him far above his peers. “On Such a Full Sea,” in 2014, showed that Lee also was capable of crafting superb dystopian fiction. His setting in that case was a near-future version of Baltimore known as “B-Mor,” a labor colony of fisherfolk.