I Leave It Up to You, the sophomore novel from Writing alum Jinwoo Chong ’21, is set to release on March 4, 2025 from Ballantine Books.
The novel follows Jack Jr as he awakens from a two-year coma to discover that his job, his home, and his relationships have largely left him behind. Reeling, he returns to his hometown, the Korean American community of Fort Lee, New Jersey, to parents he hasn’t seen in ten years and to the low rent sushi restaurant they run. As Jack reconnects with the world he left behind, he discovers something new in the familiar surroundings, and maybe something new in himself.
New York Times bestselling author Grace D. Li offered early praise for Chong’s latest, calling the work, “a remarkable portrait of an American family and a moving examination of what it takes to remake a life.”
Author Bryan Washington offered further commendation, calling the novel, “wise and surprising, irresistible and insightful, a riot and a tender exploration of (re)discovering your place in the world.”
I Leave It Up to You isn’t Chong’s first time delving into questions of identity amidst temporal chaos. His debut novel, 2023’s Flux, written while in the MFA program, tells a time-bending tale of three lives intersecting, a nefarious new technology, and the cancellation of a once beloved Asian American TV detective.
Flux went on to become a buzzy breakout for Chong, earning acclaim as an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review, a best book of the year shoutout from Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and GQ, and a 2024 finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award.
In a 2023 interview with Full-Stop.net, Chong detailed his approach for tackling new projects, “The process for which I write most everything is to set things forth in an outline that grows and grows, including pieces of dialogue, descriptions, summaries of scenes, research links, etc.” It’s a process that has so far yielded two novels, an impressive resume of short fiction, and an exciting outlook for the Columbia alum.
Jinwoo Chong’s work has also appeared in The Southern Review, Guernica, The Rumpus, LitHub, Chicago Quarterly Review, and Electric Literature. He currently lives in New York.
I Leave It Up to You is now available for pre-order as a 320-page hardcover, ebook, and an unabridged audiobook from Random House Audio.
