First published 2023
A laid-off factory worker climbs high above the ground, staging a desperate sit-in protest that echoes across generations of his family's history. His act of defiance connects to his ancestors who worked the railways through Japanese occupation, Liberation, and decades of division between North and South Korea. The family's story spans from the colonial era through the twenty-first century, following ordinary working people as they struggle against forces beyond their control. Each generation faces the same fundamental challenge: how to survive when the country itself remains broken in half. The novel weaves together their individual battles with Korea's collective dream of reuniting the severed rail lines that once connected the peninsula. Through magical realist elements, Hwang Sok-yong captures both the daily reality of industrial workers and the deeper spiritual wounds of a nation split apart, showing how personal grief mirrors national trauma across a full century of Korean experience.
Genres: literary-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-saga, generational-conflict
Setting: Korea, North Korea, South Korea
Period: Colonial Era, Liberation, 20th Century, 21st Century
600 pages · Paperback · Scribe US