This full-length novel, published eight years after If the Waves Belong to the Sea , encompasses all key themes of Kim Yeonsu's novels: youth, love, history, and the individual. It follows the life of the poet Gi-haeng, who faces a world drastically changed since the Korean War. From being better recognized as a poet in the 1930s and 1940s, to being asked to write poems in the North that aligned with the party’s ideology after the war, and translating Russian literature into Korean, we can infer that he is modeled after the widely known poet Baek Seok.

Unrealized dreams don't disappear; they’re rewritten by someone else

The light that began with him 60 years ago has finally reached us today

While The Last of Seven Years doesn’t focus on restoring the life of Baek Seok, whose postwar activities remain uncertain, it is significant that the novel explores his blank period, when his dreams were repeatedly crushed, rather than his pre-war years as an active poet. During this time of absence, he “was neither remembered as a poet nor did he marry the woman he loved, let alone become a teacher at a rural school" (p. 83), appearing no different from a failure. However, Kim Yeonsu seems to suggest that this is only true when viewed from the historical context of 1950s or from the perspective of Gi-haeng’s individual life.

In other words, unrealized dreams and desperate, unfulfilled desires don't disappear; instead, they transcend time and the individual to be realized "elsewhere, someday in the distant future, even if not now" (p. 58)—by someone else who fills the life’s void. Therefore, it only seems natural that The Last of Seven Years begins by unfolding Gi-haeng’s life in the 1950s, driving the character to live two distinct lives: one in which he fails to achieve his desired life, and another in which he lives exactly as he had hoped. Breathing new life into what had been considered complete and enabling two lives— this is one of the reasons we remain captivated by Kim Yeonsu's novels, and readers will come to realize this while reading The Last of Seven Years.

Support from Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.