On Such a Full Sea

The Guardian writes a review about On Such a Full Sea, a novel by Chang Rae Lee: "Dystopia is by its nature a dreary, inhospitable country. To its early explorers it held all the excitement of discovery, and that made their descriptions fresh and powerful – EM Forster's "The Machine Stops", Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. But for the last 30 years or more, Dystopia has been a major tourist attraction. Everybody goes there and writes a book about it. And the books tend to be alike, because the terrain is limited and its nature is monotonous."

"Lee's prose is suave and canny; his story flows; events are vividly described, particularly as they verge into grotesque folktale violence and exaggeration; there are pleasant contemplative moments. Readers who find anachronism and implausibility easy to swallow will enjoy the story and perhaps find in it the fresh vision, the new take on dreary old Dystopia, that I could not."