Bøker av Cho Nam-Joo

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is changing the world one country at a time.

Written in Cho Nam-joo's signature razor-sharp prose, Miss Kim Knows follows eight women as they confront how gender shapes and orders their lives. A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against at work. A woman grows old. A woman becomes famous. A woman is hated, and loved, and then hated again. As with Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, these microcosmic stories prove eerily relatable under Cho Nam-joo's precise, unveiled gaze, offering another captivating read from an essential voice in fiction."There is mischief and glee to be found in these pages, along with the kind of laughter that sets two women over 50 rolling in snow with tears streaming down their frozen cheeks and the aurora borealis dancing above them." -Hephzibah Anderson, The Guardian

In a country called Town, a doctor named Su is found dead in an abandoned car. There is only one place the police intend to look for her suspected killer: the Saha Estates.Controlled by a secretive organization of ministers, Town is the safest, richest nation in the world. But it is a society clearly divided into the haves and have-nots, and those who have the very least-who aren't even considered citizens-live on the Saha Estates. Residents of Saha must squat in moldy units without plumbing or electricity and can only find work doing harsh labor. For many, the apartment complex is a bleak haven for escaping even bleaker pasts-as it was for Jin-kyung and her brother, Do-Kyung, who showed up one day sopping wet and shivering.No one is shocked when a lowlife like Do-Kyung becomes the main suspect in Su's-a citizen's-murder. But then Do-Kyung disappears. Isolated in a barren Saha unit, Jin-Kyung makes a choice: she will finally confront a system hellbent on erasing her brother's existence. To find him, she must rely on her tightlipped neighbors, from the mysterious janitor known as "Old Man," to Granny Konnim, the community gardener and reluctant midwife, to Woomi, an unwitting test subject at the local clinic. On her quest for the truth, Jin-kyung will uncover a reality far darker than she could have imagined.Written in Cho Nam-Joo's signature sharp prose, brilliantly translated by Jamie Chang, Saha is a chilling portrait of what happens when we finally unmask our oppressors.

There are two classes of people in the Town: L and L2. The ones with citizenship are referred to as Ls, or Citizens. They are above a certain level of financial status with knowledge or skills that the Town requires. The L2s are people without citizenship but have a clean criminal record. After interview and physical examination, they can stay and work for two years in this safest and richest corporate nation on earth. Then there are those below even the L2s, illegal aliens called the saha. They are the immigrants, the disabled, the misfits, victims of violence and poverty who dwell in the decrepit Saha Mansion and are named accordingly. So what happens when a respected young pediatrician is found dead in a parking lot, with evidence of drug overdose and sexual assault, and the prime suspect is her saha boyfriend?A major police crackdown ensues, with the boyfriend quickly arrested and executed, but is he really behind the murder? His sister, Jinkyung, vows to find out the truth, only to discover the disappearance of a saha girl who has been the test subject of the Town Medical Lab. What lies behind the impenetrable walls of the Town, and who are the mysterious seven Premiers who rule it?Eight years in the making, SAHA MANSION is a powerful tale of dystopia and a battle cry for the dispossessed. Cho gives voice to the marginalized and often unseen minority: They are all Kim Jiyoung, every single one of them.