"Filled with the kind of sublime, galvanizing stories that strike like a lightning bolt, searing your nerves . . . It's easy enough to see why Kim . . . is acclaimed as the best writer of his generation; pick up this book and find out for yourself." — Nylon It's been twenty-five years since I last murdered someone, or has it been twenty-six? Diary of a Murderer captivates and provokes in equal measure, exploring what it means to be on the edge—between life and death, good and evil. In the titular novella, a former serial killer suffering from memory loss sets his sights on one final target: his daughter's boyfriend, who he suspects is also a serial killer. In other stories we witness an affair between two childhood friends that questions the limits of loyalty and love; a family's disintegration after a baby son is kidnapped and recovered years later; and a wild, erotic ride about pursuing creativity at the expense...

A foreign film importer, Gi-yeong is a family man with a wife and daughter. An aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi, he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Suddenly he receives a mysterious email, a directive seemingly from the home office. He has one day to return to headquarters. He hasn’t heard from anyone in over ten years. Why is he being called back now? Is this message really from Pyongyang? Is he returning to receive new orders or to be executed for a lack of diligence? Has someone in the South discovered his secret identity? Is this a trap? Spanning the course of one day, Your Republic Is Calling You is an emotionally taut, psychologically astute, haunting novel that reveals the depth of one particularly gripping family secret and the way in which we sometimes never really know the people we love. Confronting moral questions on small and large scales, it mines the political and cultural transformations that have transformed South Korea since the 1980s. A lament for the fate of a certain kind of man and a certain kind of manhood, it is ultimately a searing study of the long and insidious effects of dividing a nation in two. From Publishers WeeklySpanning a single day, this tense spy novel from Kim (I Have the Right to Destroy Myself), marred only by some stilted prose, is also a deeply compelling study of the self and varying themes of trust. Kim Ki-yong, a North Korean spy who's lived undercover for 21 years, has fully adapted to life in Seoul, South Korea, where he runs a successful foreign-film importing business, owns a home, and has a wife and teenage daughter, neither of whom is aware of his past or actual identity. As Ki-yong ponders returning to the austere and sterile militaristic regime of the North after receiving a coded message from his handler ("Liquidate everything and return immediately"), his wife, Ma-ri, struggles with infidelity and his daughter, Hyon-mi, maneuvers the tumultuous and tricky landscape of adolescence. Kim offers a riveting tale of espionage along with keen observations of human behavior. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistAn e-mail changes Kim Ki-yong’s life. Seemingly a piece of spam in the Seoul resident’s in-box, it’s actually a coded communiqué from Pyongyang, ordering him to return to North Korea—immediately. Ki-yong isn’t a sleeper spy, exactly; it’s just that he hasn’t received any orders in 10 years. Now, at age 42, he has spent exactly half his life in South Korea. He lives comfortably, working as an importer of foreign films, with lockstep life in the north only a distant memory. Will he meet the minisub and go back? Or will he defy the command and stay? This isn’t really a spy story but a fascinating, personal portrait of life in a divided country and its toll on the citizens’ psyches. It’s not just Ki-yong’s story, either: his alienated wife, Ma-ri, is on her own intense journey of self-discovery, and, in complete ignorance of her parents’ worries, daughter Hyon-mi struggles with boys, school, and growing up. Kim’s thoughtful, effortless prose is a pleasure. His characters are completely relatable and their story is revelatory. A writer to watch—and, of course, read. --Keir Graff

In the fast-paced, high-urban landscape of Seoul, C and K are brothers who have fallen in love with the same woman—Se-yeon—who tears at both of them as they all try desperately to find real connection in an atomized world. A spectral, nameless narrator haunts the edges of their lives as he tells of his work helping the lost and hurting find escape through suicide. Dreamlike and beautiful, the South Korea brought forth in this novel is cinematic in its urgency and its reflection of contemporary life everywhere—far beyond the boundaries of the Korean peninsula. Recalling the emotional tension of Milan Kundera and the existential anguish of Bret Easton Ellis, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself achieves its author's greatest wish—to show Korean literature as part of an international tradition. Young-ha Kim is a young master, the leading literary voice of his generation.

A Mariner Original From one of Korea's literary stars, a novel about two orphans from the streets of Seoul: one becomes the head of a powerful motorcycle gang and the other follows him at all costs In South Korea, the word pokju-jokdescribes motorcycle fanatics. They form groups of hundreds and wildly speed through cities at night. For Jae and Dongyu, two orphans, pokju-jok is a way of survival. Jae is born in a bathroom stall at the Seoul Express Bus Terminal. And Dongyu is born mute—unable to communicate with anyone except Jae. Both boys grow up on the streets of Seoul among runaway teenagers, con men, prostitutes, religious fanatics, and thieves. After years navigating the streets, Jae becomes an icon for uprooted teenagers, bringing an urgent message to them and making his way to the top of the gang. Under his leadership, the group grows more aggressive and violent—and soon becomes the police's central target.