My Brilliant Life: A Novel

"A mortally ill 16-year-old, Areum, narrates this debut novel – nominally about his parents, who were also 16 when they had him. Areum has progeria, a disease that accelerates aging in children. Already inhabiting an old man’s body, Areum wants what every teenager wants – friends and love. He plows through epic loneliness in the bosom of a warm, but deeply flawed, extended family. He befriends his ribald grandfather and listens to the stories of his great-grandfather. And in telling his parents’ story with remarkable dispassion, he discovers his own. The result is a book that braids a rare tragedy with unstinting family love and humor."