"Hey You, Julian Yu!' That's how 18-year-old Julian Yu's peers relentlessly mock him. If only he could hide away and read, left alone as an irredeemable nerd. With desperation mounting as his junior year draws to a close and young adulthood looms on the horizon, will Julian ever escape the torment? Will he decipher those enigmas called relationships, whether with his enviably popular older brother who's Ivy League bound, his elegant English teacher with a mysterious Japanese past, or his Jewish classmate turned potential love interest? Will he reconcile his Taiwanese heritage and broken Chinese with his American upbringing and impeccable English? And more than anything, will he finally relinquish his innate cynicism for something akin to hope? The Translation of Julian Yu is a coming-of-age novel for our fractious times about a young Taiwanese-American's confrontations with race, culture, and language, and his search for an identity that transcends it all.