Spring on the Peninsula: A Novel

Longlisted for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize!

A desultory libertine mourns a failed relationship over the course of two harsh winters in this unprecedented portrait of millennials living in Seoul.

The time is roughly now and Kai, a white-collar worker, has just been abandoned by his longtime lover. Follow him through a labyrinth of alleyways as he reels from this sudden departure. Accompany him up snowy mountains where he contemplates ending his own life. That mourning can be both an art and ever-unfolding journey is epitomized in the paths that Kai crosses and the lives he alters for better or worse.

Kai is not the only one feeling disoriented and aimless these days. Those in his inner circle similarly experience personal crises as they go through their thirties in a nation simmering with class and generational tensions as well as the specter of new and old wars. Evocative of Dangerous Liaisons in its social appraisals, and in the tradition of Neruda’s erotic reveries, Ery Shin’s striking debut captures contemporary Seoul in all of its glory and turmoil. Phantasmagorical and melancholic, and daringly irreverent, Spring on the Peninsula is a poignant meditation on modern life in a city beset by North Korea’s shadow.