*A novel that delicately probes into characters who stoically bear their lives.

“You are nowhere but you are present everywhere.”

“A view of everyone from a place of nowhere.”

Yoon Haeseo’s first full-length novel is From the Zero Person’s Point of View, which the critics viewed as an “amazingly independent work” from Chorus Kronos, her previous book of short stories. The author is known for her poetic contemplation and fluid writing.

Reading her novel is about diligently trying to follow a narrative that is not readily comprehensible, and this requires much thought processing and contemplating and reading in between the lines. It is about a collaborative endeavor of giving shape to a blank map for the direction that the author has in mind and consequently arriving with great effort at a poetic domain that not many people could dream of.

The author’s guidance, “Do not seek anything for there is nothing to be sought,” can also be construed as a message that one must eradicate all thoughts in their mind in order to discover the “way.”

Therefore, From the Zero Person’s Point of View, is recounted through piling up layers of visages of people who endure their anxiety and suffering of all the moments, while each and every incident and emotion are in the end a communal sensory experience which will be converged as a possibility of future. The ultimate goal of literature, that is, “To be the other,” which is in effect an impossible task, is aspired for, in space and time by way of language. As one turns the pages to read more and more, one will realize the stories are not mere fragments but part of a grand scheme.

Hence, From the Zero Person’s Point of View is a story about emptiness and at the same time an ambitious and adventurous narrative that seeks to embody the entirety of life. This particular reading experience of my story turning into your story, and then again his and her story overlapping, end up in my deluging myself when one is close to finishing the book only to arrive at myself at the end—providing a dreamlike bliss to the reader.