Author(s): Cho Nam-Joo

Fiction | Vijeta's Book Talkers

A fierce international bestseller that launched Korea's new feminist movement, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman's psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

Kim Jiyoung is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy.

Kim Jiyoung is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own.

Kim Jiyoung is a female preyed upon by male teachers at school. Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blames her when she is harassed late at night.

Kim Jiyoung is a good student who doesn't get put forward for internships. Kim Jiyoung is a model employee but gets overlooked for promotion. Kim Jiyoung is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity.

Kim Jiyoung has started acting strangely.

Kim Jiyoung is depressed.

Kim Jiyoung is mad.

Kim Jiyoung is her own woman.

Kim Jiyoung is every woman.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is the South Korean sensation that has got the whole world talking. The life story of one young woman born at the end of the twentieth century raises questions about endemic misogyny and institutional oppression that are relevant to us all.

Riveting, original and uncompromising, this is the most important book to have emerged from South Korea since Han Kang's The Vegetarian.

CONSTANT READER STAFF REVIEW: VIJETA

Just thinking about this book enlists an exhausted sigh, because Kim Jiyoung stands for every woman in this world who is tired with a capital T.

Our heroine, Kim Jiyoung is shadowed by her brother, overlooked at school and at work, bullied by her male co-workers, and taken for granted as a mother and wife, labelled as "crazy" or "ridiculous." She can never win when she is undermined at every turn.

In many ways, this is not fiction at all – how could it be when every woman has been Kim Jiyoung at least once in her life? Cho Nam-Joo reflected on her own life experiences to bring this book to light, and its publication sparked both a renewed political and social debate about the treatment of women in South Korean society. She writes in short, punchy prose, straightforward and loud to remind you this is no laughing matter. This is such an important instalment in feminist literature. I would highly recommend!