I Hear Your Voice A Novel

" Elegantly rendered into English by Lee, author of How I Became a North Korean (she is also translating Kim's next novel), this is a wrenching examination of discarded youth, abuses of power, and the irreparable disintegration of societal structures." - BOOKLIST " Kim ( I Have the Right to Destroy Myself , 2010, etc.), a prolific and eclectic Korean novelist, has found artistically fertile ground in the broken lives of his country's misfits... Like the shifting gears of an engine, Kim's narrative changes perspectives from Donggyu's first-person recollections to wide-screen omniscience to the point of view of an enigmatic police officer and even to that of the author himself, following a climactic motorcycle rally whose stunning denouement leaves behind many more questions than answers... [Kim's] own empathetic gifts applied toward even the quirkiest and seediest of his characters evoke a vivid panorama of what life along the edges is like in Seoul." ? KIRKUS REVIEWS " I Hear Your Voice is compulsively readable-it zips along on light feet, relating sad and often horrifying events without judgement. Young-ha Kim is kin to those writers of more experimental times than ours: Daniel Defoe and Thomas Nashe, writers who followed their stories and themes into whatever haunted, humid dark corners they found, and who weren't afraid to linger in those places to see what else might be there. Kim shares their unmoored curiosity as well as their deep discipline-usually, you have to pick one. In a relatively short space, Kim accomplishes much, and saves his very best work for the book's miraculous final act: a rare treat." -John Darnielle, New York Times bestselling author of Universal Harvester and National Book Award-finalist Wolf in White Van