About this ebook
This psychological thriller of a North Korean spy living in Seoul is “perhaps the most intriguing and accomplished Korean fiction yet to appear in English” (Kirkus).
Foreign film importer Kim Ki-Yong is a family man with a wife and daughter. Living a prosperous life in Seoul, South Korea, he’s an aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi. But he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Then, after more than a decade of silence from the home office, he receives a mysterious email stating that he has one day to return to headquarters. But is the message really from Pyongyang—or has he been discovered? And if the message is real, is he being called home to receive new orders or to be executed for a lack of diligence?
Spanning the course of a single day, Your Republic Is Calling You delves deep into a gripping family secret to ask whether we ever truly know the people we love. Mining the political and cultural transformations of South Korea since the 1980s, author Young-ha Kim confronts moral questions on small and large scales.
“This intense novel’s bristling plot—confined to the events of a single day—ironically echoes that of Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses.”—Kirkus
Foreign film importer Kim Ki-Yong is a family man with a wife and daughter. Living a prosperous life in Seoul, South Korea, he’s an aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi. But he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Then, after more than a decade of silence from the home office, he receives a mysterious email stating that he has one day to return to headquarters. But is the message really from Pyongyang—or has he been discovered? And if the message is real, is he being called home to receive new orders or to be executed for a lack of diligence?
Spanning the course of a single day, Your Republic Is Calling You delves deep into a gripping family secret to ask whether we ever truly know the people we love. Mining the political and cultural transformations of South Korea since the 1980s, author Young-ha Kim confronts moral questions on small and large scales.
“This intense novel’s bristling plot—confined to the events of a single day—ironically echoes that of Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses.”—Kirkus
About the author
YOUNG-HA KIM is the author of seven novels—four published in the United States, including the acclaimed I Have the Right to Destroy Myself and the award-winning Black Flower—and five short-story collections. He has won every major Korean literature award, and his works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Seoul, South Korea.
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