“Everything looked too good on the surface.”

“A book about perfect ghosts who live together in a strange way in an ultramodern wasteland covered in dust”

“This book exposes a world of monsters who devour those who have nothing.”_

- Hankook Ilbo

“The book reads easily but brings into sharp relief the social conditions of the day.”

- The Seoul Shinmun

Jeong Jiyong, son and heir of the Oson conglomerate’s charismatic head, Jeong Daecheol, is deemed by the world to be an idiot. Jiyong, who looks decent but is devious somehow, marries Choi Yeongju, who is fully equipped with beauty and a good education, and who hails from an influential family. Their marriage is in accordance with a plan concocted by Jiyong’s father, President Jeong, and Yeongju’s mother, Professor Choi. 

The newlyweds reside in a suite in “Maison de Rêve,” a “smart” apartment built by Oson in L, a city on the outskirts of Seoul that is perfectly controlled by a state-of-the-art system and 999 CCTV cameras. Maison de Rêve is a testing ground for President Jeong, who has a private dream of creating a highly balanced group of people by having people of various classes live there under perfect control, as well as a living facility where the future plans of Oson are integrated.

Jiyong, who lives in a 7,000 square-foot penthouse, has a chance encounter in the lobby with Yi Hana, an Internet broadcast jockey who lives in a 200 square-foot one-room apartment in the same building. Hana is the complete opposite of Yeongju, who is like an elegant queen, and Jiyong shows great interest in Hana, who responds immediately to what Jiyong does and says. (“I want to eat you, Hana,” he says at one point.) By the time Yeongju becomes pregnant with Jiyong’s child, Hana and Jiyong are in a in a de facto marriage of their own. Having become aware of the affair, Yeongju grows increasingly discontent (“Why did I ever get married in the first place!” she exclaims) and begins to keep watch on him.

What brings life to this story, which is like a rumor spread through group chatting rooms, is the reality exposed by the characters. N.E.W. is a tragedy written in relatively benign sentences. You have a nightmare. You wake up. But you’re still in a nightmare. Kim Sagwa’s novels make us open our eyes and push us from behind. We have no choice but to keep walking in the fog.

Kim Sagwa

Kim Sagwa was born in Seoul in 1984 and graduated from the Department of Creative Writing at Korea National University of Arts. She made her literary debut with 02 (Yong’i), for which she won the Changbi New Writer’s Prize. Her works include the short story collections 02 and Turning for the Worse, the novels Mina, Pu’l Lies Down, B and Chaek and Me, The Poetry of Terror, and In Arcadia, as well as the essay collections, The Taste of Sugar and Days Less Than 0. Kim has been living and writing in Manhattan since 2016.