Hye-young Pyun Boeken

WINNER OF THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD 'A Korean take on Misery' Time 'A masterwork of suspense, and a profound meditation on grief, solitude, and secrecy' Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me Oghi wakes in a hospital bed unable to speak or move. The car accident that killed his wife has left him trapped in his own body and under the control of his mother-in-law, as she grieves the loss of her only child. Isolated from his friends and neglected by his nurse, Oghi's world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his wife, a sensitive woman who found solace in cultivating her garden. But as Oghi remains alone and paralysed, his mother-in-law is hard at work in the now-abandoned garden, uprooting what her daughter had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes... A bestseller in Korea, The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms. 'Like Hitchcock or Abe, Pyun peers head on into the unnerving depths of human grief' Blake Butler, author of 300,000,000 'While reading The Hole, you'll find yourself suddenly doubting everything' Kyung-sook Shin, New York Times bestselling author of Please Look After Mother

From the Shirley Jackson Award–winning author of The Hole, a slow-burning noir thriller with a touch of horror and the uncanny.

For fans of J. G. Ballard and early Ian McEwan, a tense psychological thriller and Kafkaesque parable by the author of The Hole―called “an airtight masterpiece” by the Korean Economic Daily. Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun's City of Ash and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease, and flooded with trash. No sooner does he disembark than he is whisked away by quarantine officials and detained overnight. Isolated and forgotten, he realizes that he is stranded with no means of contacting the outside world. Still worse, when he finally manages to reach an old friend, he is told that his ex-wife's body was found in his apartment and he is the prime suspect. Barely managing to escape arrest, he must struggle to survive in the streets of this foreign city gripped with fear of contamination and reestablish contact with his company and friends in order to clear his reputation. But as the man's former life slips further and further from his grasp, and he looks back on his time with his wife, it becomes clear that he may not quite be who he seems. From the bestselling author of The Hole, City of Ash and Red is an apocalyptic account of the destructive impact of fear and paranoia on people's lives as well as a haunting novel about a man’s loss of himself and his humanity.

Dwie kobiety. Dwie bolesne utraty. Dwie ścieżki poszukiwania prawdy i jedna rozpacz rozpisana na dwie role. Se-o zamknęła się w domu z ojcem, by uciec od świata, który ją skrzywdził. Tymczasem jej dom płonie. Po tym już nic nie będzie takie samo. Ki-Jeong jest nauczycielką, ale nie czuje się dobrze w tym, co robi. Pewnego dnia otrzyma wiadomość, która nią wstrząśnie. Losy obu kobiet połączą się w zaskakujący sposób. Intrygująca fantazja literacka o tym, jak kształtują nas smutek i rozgoryczenie. O roli przypadku, gdy stajemy się sobie nagle bliscy w jednym i drugim. Także o tym, jak wiele dowiadujemy się o swoim życiu, krocząc ścieżkami zmarłych. Jednocześnie bezkompromisowa rozprawa z ciemną stroną koreańskiego kapitalizmu, w którym pieniądz okrutnie kształtuje ludzką tożsamość. Ta mroczna opowieść to historia ucieczek i poszukiwań, ale przede wszystkim narracja o wyobcowaniu. Powieść w każdym wymiarze nieoczywista. Jarosław Czechowicz, „Krytycznym okiem” Pyun Hye-young urodziła się w Seulu w 1972 roku. Zadebiutowała, wygrywając konkurs zorganizowany przez gazetę Shinmun na „Młodego pisarza” w 2000 roku opowiadaniem „Drżące krople rosy”. Jest laureatką wielu nagród, w tym między innymi The Shirley Jackson Award w 2017 roku za powieść Dół. Prawo linii to trzecia książka autorki po polsku.