I was born and grew up in Seoul. My bestselling debut novel has been longlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction and the 2024 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize and shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. My book is inspired by my great-aunt, one of the oldest women who had escaped alone from North Korea. It is available from Harper Perennial in the U.S. and Virago in the UK. The novel’s translations continue to meet readers worldwide, including in Italy, Romania, Greece, Denmark, Spain, Switzerland, and South Korea.
At the Golden Sunset retirement home, it is not unusual for residents to invent stories. So when elderly Ms. Mook first begins to unspool her memories, the obituarist listening to her is skeptical. Stories of captivity, friendship, murder, assumed identities, and spying. A life that moves from WWII Indonesia to Busan during the Korean War, from cold-war Pyongyang to a Protestant church in China. The adventures are so colorful and various, at times so unbelievable. Surely, they can't all belong to the same woman. Can they?
As playful and thought-provoking as it is compelling, as brutal and harrowing as it is achingly poignant and tender, this novel is about love and war, deceit and betrayal, identity, storytelling, and the trickery required for survival.
I both love and hate Zenia as a heroine in this witty, page-turning literary fiction by Atwood. Zenia is one of the cleverest and the most malicious female protagonists I’ve ever known: she constantly deceives her friends with her kaleidoscopic lies; she screws money out of them, and she even steals their men.
Would I want to be friends with her in real life? Probably not. But as a literary character, she stuns and captivates me and allows me to ponder the female transgression that lurks in all of us.
Zenia is beautiful, smart and greedy, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless; a man's dream and a woman"s nightmare. She is also dead. Just to make sure Tony, Roz andd Charis are there for the funeral. But five years on, as the three women share an indulgent, sisterly lunch, the unthinkable happens; 'with waves of ill will flowing out of her like cosmic radiation', Zenia is back...
Like Zenia, Lila, the crafty protagonist of this book, is a born charmer. With her wicked intelligence and unique beauty, she turns heads and stirs controversy wherever she goes, attracting admirers and haters.
She is unafraid of fighting men’s violence with violence–she carries a shoemaker’s knife to deter the unwanted advances of suitors–and she is not hesitant to describe herself as mean.
Elena, Lila’s best friend and the novel’s narrator, comes in second after Lila in many things in life, including academic excellence and boys’ attention, and often suffers caught between love and jealousy toward Lila.
OVER 14 MILLION COPIES OF THE NEAPOLITAN QUARTET SOLD WORLDWIDE
NOW A MAJOR TV SERIES
GUARDIAN 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY
58 WEEKS ON THE BOOKSELLER'S TOP 20 ORIGINAL FICTION BESTSELLERS LIST
SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2015
43 INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS DEALS
Now in B-format Paperback
From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but…
Many years ago, when I was sharing several chapters of my book with my then-writing group, I faced harsh criticism from some of its members, mainly due to my protagonist, Trickster.
They found her too violent, too cunning, and without remorse. I read in many of Flynn’s interviews that she had also received a lot of criticism for her vicious main character. Certain readers believed the murderous, unrepenting heroine of this book was a shame to womanhood.
In defense of my violent heroine Trickster, I quoted Flynn’s response to her critics: the notion that women are inherently good and nurturing is itself deeply sexist and limiting toward women.
THE ADDICTIVE No.1 BESTSELLER AND INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON OVER 20 MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE THE BOOK THAT DEFINES PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER
Who are you? What have we done to each other?
These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they weren't made by him. And then there are the persistent calls on…
Eileen is one of the most twisted and unconventional literary heroines I’ve ever read. Behind her quiet demeanor and dull face hides her mind, which is like a killer’s, always furious and seething.
While working at a juvenile correctional facility, Eileen meets Rebecca, another key character far removed from most women of their generation. Seductive and deceitful, Rebecca cajoles Eileen into joining her act of crime–a violent, underhanded plan to restore her idea of justice.
Shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and chosen by David Sedaris as his recommended book for his Fall 2016 tour.
So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes-a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to…
The numerous heroines of this polyphonous book are quite different from all the other female protagonists on the list. First, these women are real people, former Soviet soldiers who fought in the Second World War. Secondly, these women weren’t villainous by their nature or deeds.
They had been rather vilified by their male comrades who no longer saw the use of fearless women after their war had been won. Once hailed as patriots, many of these brave women had to face discrimination when they returned home, stigmatized as sinful, unwomanly women with blood on their hands. I’ve never shed so many tears while reading a book.
'It would be hard to find a book that feels more important or original' - Viv Groskop, Observer
Extraordinary stories from Soviet women who fought in the Second World War - from the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
"Why, having stood up for and held their own place in a once absolutely male world, have women not stood up for their history? Their words and feelings? A whole world is hidden from us. Their war remains unknown... I want to write the history of that war. A women's history."
Bright but unassuming Marilyn Jones has some grown-up decisions to make, especially after Mama goes to prison for drugs and larceny. With no one to take care of them, Marilyn and her younger, mentally challenged brother, Carol, get tossed into the foster care system. While shuffling from one home to another, Marilyn makes it her mission to find the Tan Man, a mysterious man from her babyhood she believes holds the key to her family’s happiness.
But Marilyn’s quest is halted when her daddy, an ex-con she has never met, is chosen by…
Bright but unassuming Marilyn Jones has some grown-up decisions to make, especially after Mama goes to prison for drugs and larceny. With no one to take care of them, Marilyn and her younger, mentally challenged brother, Carol, get tossed into the foster care system. While shuffling from one home to another, Marilyn makes it her mission to find the Tan Man, a mysterious man from her babyhood she believes holds the key to her family's happiness.
But Marilyn's quest is halted when her daddy, an ex-con she has never met, is chosen by the courts as the new guardian. Caleb…
