![Hello, Future! [Please be kind.] Hardcover Journal](https://hachette.imgix.net/books/9781546015079.jpg?w=210&h=280&fit=crop)
Violets: From the bestselling author of Please Look After Mother
Kyung-Sook Shin
Formats & Editions
'Dreamy, immersive and evocative' TLS
'Darkly beautiful' Frances Cha
'Strange and gripping' Guardian
San is twenty-two and alone when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul's bustling city centre.
Haunted by childhood rejection, she stumbles through life - painfully vulnerable, stifled, and unsure. She barely registers to others, especially by the ruthless standards of 1990s South Korea.
But over the course of one summer, San meets a curious cast of characters: the nonspeaking shop owner, a brash co-worker, aggressive customers and an enigmatic magazine photographer. Fuelled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she dares, briefly, to dream of connection in an unforgiving world.
Translated by Anton Hur
Read More
Praise for Violets: From the bestselling author of Please Look After Mother
-
Darkly beautiful, Violets explores the toll of abandonment and the relentless marginalization of a helpless young woman . . . Shin writes of the cruelty and dangers of disempowerment, and an ensuing spiral of despairShin Kyung Sook tells us a story which takes place both in a foreign land and in a very familiar space in our hearts. Human beings' everlasting agony of "longing to belong" presents itself in every page of this book with intensity and with beauty. A subtle, deep, unique work of true literatureViolets is a moving delve into a lonely psyche, with writing raw and sophisticated, tenderhearted and clear-eyed. Vividly translated by Anton Hur, Shin Kyung-sook's novel is also an intimate, sideways portrait of Seoul through the eyes of a rural outsider who roams the bright lights and big city not in pursuit of ambitious dreams, but seeking care and human touch
Find a book you'll love, get our newsletter
© Hachette Aotearoa | New Zealand, All Rights Reserved · Site by Chook