The Great Homecoming

Description

1959, Seoul. Divided from his family by the violent tumult of the Korean civil war, Yunho arrives in South Korea's capital searching for his oldest friend. He finds him in the arms of Eve Moon, a dancer with many names who may be a refugee fleeing the communist North, or an American spy. Beguiled, Yunho falls desperately in love. But nothing in Seoul is what it seems. The city is crowded with double agents and soldiers, and wracked by protests and poverty, while across the border, Pyongyang grows more prosperous by the day. When a series of betrayals and a brutal crime drive the three friends into exile, Yunho finds himself caught in the riptide of history. Might a homecoming to North Korea be salvation?

Anna Kim was born in 1977 in Daejeon, South Korea and grew up in Austria, where she studied Philosophy at the University of Vienna. She is the author of four novels and two essay collections, and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Austrian State Fellowship for Literature, the Elias Canetti Fellowship, the Robert Musil Fellowship, and the 2012 European Union Prize for Literature. Her novel Frozen Time was published in English translation in 2010, and her novel Anatomy of a Night in 2012. Her books have been translated into a further twelve languages.