Cloud People is a bleak, furious, darkly funny dystopian social novel about poverty, class hatred, family obligation, spectacle, shame, and escape. It is narrated by Oh Haneul, a young woman born on a vast pink cloud that floats 1.5 kilometres above a city. The cloud is not a soft white natural cloud but a toxic, […]
The Future of Adults is a short story collection by Pyeon Hye-young that examines adulthood not as a stable or authoritative state, but as a condition marked by fear, moral compromise, silence, and deferred responsibility. Across its stories, adults are repeatedly shown as unreliable, ethically ambiguous, or quietly desperate figures, while children and marginalized individuals […]
Black Deer follows In-yeong, a withdrawn young woman whose life becomes entangled with that of Ui-seon, a fragile and taciturn coworker. The novel opens in a dreamlike state, establishing an atmosphere of unease, darkness, and bodily anxiety. In-yeong senses from the beginning that something is deeply wrong, though it cannot yet be named. Her attention […]
Lemon is a poignant exploration of loss and its aftermath, centering around the unsolved murder of Hae-Un, a high school girl. The novel delves into the lives of those connected to Hae-Un, emphasizing the impact on her family and friends rather than focusing on identifying the murderer. The narrative unfolds through eight chapters, each presenting […]
Six women facing different fertility issues have a group chat: HELLO BABY. It’s where they exchange information and seek comfort in one another as they surmount the pains of IVF and the agony of failure and miscarriages in their journey to motherhood. The novel switches between narrators, where each woman’s story is spotlighted, alongside a […]
The text explores the themes of language, silence, and connection through the interconnected narratives of multiple characters. The story revolves around a silent woman who, after losing her ability to speak for the second time in 30 years, decides to learn Ancient Greek in an attempt to break the silence. The narrative also introduces a […]
A book about self-discovery at thirty years old, it is a simple story about a woman who quits an unsatisfying job as a junior TV screenwriter, joins a ceramics studio, and slowly rediscovers her buried ambitions to become a novelist. The novel opens with the protagonist, Jung Min, moving to a small suburb of Ilsan […]
Bora Chung’s latest novel is an intriguing collection of ghost stories that harken back to the tradition of tales told in the dead of night to curious listeners. Set in an isolated research lab, the stories revolve around a junior security staff member who takes the night watch along with a senior employee. As they […]
In the collection of stories you’ve described, the author, Bora Chung, weaves a tapestry of diverse and imaginative tales that challenge traditional fairy tale conventions and explore themes of agency, empowerment, and resilience. These stories are characterized by whimsy, sarcasm, and a playful approach to subverting gender norms and established character archetypes. Here is a […]
Three years into lockdown, L-City is a ghost of itself. Its crime rates have drastically increased— violent crimes as a matter of course (as the infected tend to lose empathy and even their awareness of others) as well as daggizo related scams/fake news. Pale imitations of their former selves, the residents have slowly gotten used […]