Reader Score
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84% of readers
recommend this book
ALEXANDER CHEE is the author of the novels Edinburgh, for which he won a Whiting Award, and Queen of the Night, which was a national bestseller. His essay collection How to Write an Autobiographical Novel was named a best book of the year by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly, NPR, and Time. In 2025 Kirkus Reviews named it one of the hundred best books of nonfiction of the 21st century. Chee is a recipient of the NEA Fellowship in Fiction and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, Ledig House, and Civitella Ranieri. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Tin House, Slate, and NPR, among other publications, and he is a Contributing Editor at The New Republic. He lives in New York City.
"Haunting . . .complex . . . sophisticated . . . [Chee] says volumes with just a few incendiary words." --New York Times "A coming-of-age novel 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 "Lyrical . . . arresting . . . compelling . . . Edinburgh is beautifully imagined and executed . . . Profound and poetic . . . Chee's is a voice worth listening to." --San Francisco Chronicle "Edinburgh has the force of a dream and the heft of a life. And Alexander Chee is a brilliant new writer." --Annie Dillard "Alexander Chee gets my vote for the best new novelist I've read in some time. Edinburgh is moody, dramatic--and pure." --Edmund White "Few coming-of-age novels truly stir one's emotions or lead readers to consider the trauma of their own lives. Edinburgh does both." --Newsday --