WINNER OF THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD
'A Korean take on Misery' Time
'A masterwork of suspense, and a profound meditation on grief, solitude, and secrecy' Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me
In this tense, gripping novel by a star of Korean literature, Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralysed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child.
Following months in hospital, Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her life goals thwarted except for one: cultivating the garden in front of their house.
But soon Oghi notices his mother-in-law in the abandoned garden, uprooting what his wife had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes. When asked, she answers only that she is finishing what her daughter started.
A bestseller in Korea, The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms.
'Like Hitchcock or Abe, Pyun peers head on into the unnerving depths of human grief' Blake Butler, author of 300,000,000
'While reading The Hole, you'll find yourself suddenly doubting everything' Kyung-sook Shin, New York Times bestselling author of Please Look After Mother
