Kim Ji-young, born 1982

Her name is Kim Ji-young. She is 33 years old and has the most common name in Korea. Her story has set all of Asia on fire.

«Even I don't know if I'll get married or have children. Or maybe I'll die before that. Why do I have to give up what I want to be or do for a future that I don't know if it will come or not?»

This novel has gone from being the brief story of a young Korean woman to becoming an earthquake that has shaken women around the world. Kim Ji-young (who bears the most common name among Korean women born in 1982) is apparently a woman like any other, with a youth without much glory, always in the shadows. Everything twists when, suddenly, Kim begins to speak with the voices of her mother, of a disappeared friend, of many other women. What seemed like a joke takes on the tone of a response, of an insurrection and, for others, the tone of an illness.

This book has been a shock to the literary scene in all the countries where it has been published. Beneath its apparent simplicity, there is a sense of danger that pulses throughout its pages and has opened a crack in the standards of contemporary literature.

Reviews:
«The publication of this book couldn't come at a better time: a valid reference in any conversation about feminism or gender and a beacon for anti-feminists. [...] Kim Ji-young represents a kind of sacrifice: a shattered protagonist offered to channel collective rage.»
Sarah Shin, The Guardian

«Cho Nam-joo portrays a normal life (like hers) for an audience that perhaps hasn't been able to read as many. Its apparent simplicity deserves a reading.»
Berna González Harbour, El País

«An important novel because it brings us down to earth and warns us of what is really happening. [...] A slap in the face. Just to see how it continues to add copies – it has already sold more than a million – it is worth having in our library. Not many books like this are published.»
Andrea Rovira, El Nacional

«It leaves the feeling that a wave has passed. The water has risen, little by little, it has broken at our feet with a small roar, and then it has receded leaving the sand wet and soft, and our feet a little more sunken in it.»
José Pazó Espinosa, El Imparcial

«A generational testimony.»
Andrés Sánchez Braun, La Vanguardia

«The success of Kim Ji-young thus opens up as a beautiful story of ugly normality; of discrimination that is not violent; of low-intensity dominance that nonetheless burdens women compared to men.»
A vuelapluma

«This is the short novel of a short life, of a common life, with the difficulties of anyone. But not of just anyone, but of any woman. And that is the key. [...] And everything seems so brutally everyday that, if at first this surprise is surprising, what will surprise us later is that all this has not surprised us much sooner.»
Berna González Harbour, El País (Babelia)

«This novel has helped bring women's concerns to the forefront of public debate.»
The Korea Herald

«It's strange that my eyes filled with tears, because this story is not strange to me at all. It's my story and also that of countless women of the same generation who grew up under subtle discrimination and violence.»
Choe Jieun,