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Violets cover art

Violets

By: Kyung-Sook Shin, Anton Hur - translator
Narrated by: Megan Affonso
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Summary

Translated by Anton Hur

South Korea, 1970.

San is a lonely child, ostracised from her community. She soon finds a friend in a girl called Namae, until one afternoon changes everything. Following a moment of intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently rejects San, setting her on a troubling path.

We next meet San, aged twenty-two, when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul's bustling city centre. Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San is introduced to a curious cast of characters—the mute shop owner, a brash co-worker, kind farmers and aggressive customers—and, fuelled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer.

Throughout it all, San's moment with Namae continues to linger in the back of her mind.

A story of thwarted desire, misogyny and erasure, Violets reveals the high stakes involved in one woman's desperate search for both autonomy and attachment in an unforgiving society.

©2022 Kyung-Sook Shin (P)2022 Orion Publishing Group Limited

Critic reviews

"Mesmerising, dreamlike and prescient in its sharpness and attentiveness to the dynamics between women and the male and female gaze." (Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti)

"Darkly beautiful, Violets explores the toll of abandonment and relentless marginalisation." (Frances Cha, author of If I Had Your Face)

"A subtle, deep, unique work of true literature." (Defne Suman, author of The Silence of Scheherazade)

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Not what I was expecting

I went into this blind. Having not read the reviews I was not expecting this portrayal of the extensive hunger mental illness holds. A good story.

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