LTI Korea 
DLKL 
SIWF 
Consolation Offered Through Summer's Strength: New Releases from July and August 2025 scrap download
여름의 힘을 빌려 건네는 위로, 7월과 8월의 신간 도서입니다.
「KLWAVE introduces international readers to various works of Korean literature. “New Releases” features titles that have been published in July and August 2025, selected from Kyobo Book Centre’s “Book of the Month” and Aladin’s “Magician’s Choice” lists.」
We find ourselves squinting and furrowing our brows under the dazzling, blazing sunlight. As the sound of cicadas rings in our ears while passing through the narrow, tree-lined streets, and even breathing feels heavy in the stifling heat, it is no wonder summer has long been misunderstood as a “season to be endured.”
And yet, when tossing and turning at the restless buzzing of cicadas, when heaving a long breath into the muggy air, we can sense that we are alive. In this summer, a time that sharpens our sense both joy and sorrow anew, we present the new book of July and August as we await the cool winds of autumn.
“I know. That only we can recognize in one another the truth that we want to die but actually wish to live. That those girls who reached out their hands to me already understood this.” (p 40)
Singer-songwriter HANRORO, known for touching lyrics that comfort and console, presents her first short novel, The Grapefruit Apricot Club. The book share a universe with the songs from her third EP of the same name, inviting readers to glimpse the world that inspired both the music and the fiction.
How many of us could offer a great answer, without hesitation, to the question of why we live? The four children in The Grapefruit Apricot Club are tired of their own desire to die, and so instead they decide to save one another. The paradox that “I want to die” in fact means “I want to live” is something one can grasp only after colliding with life head-on and breaking apart. Their bond is strong because they are desperate, and powerful because they are fragile.
Deep within each of us lives our childhood self, who bore wounds too early in a time we were meant to be pure and carefree. This book approaches that child with a gentle smile, reminding us that despite everything, here we are, still alive.
Breathing in the chill left behind by a bitter wind, we recall the memories of “that day.” The night of December 3 was unusually busy and cold. Novelist Hwang Jungeun who has reflected and confronted the spirit of the times in dd’s Umbrella, Nameless, and other works presents an essay collection, titled A Little Journal. Through this book, we, who have survived the threat of martial law, face our former selves of the past, who waited, anxious and helpless, for the news that was yet to come.
The muted yellow of the book’s cover stands out sharply against the gray backdrop, like light breaking through the dark days. Tracing the path from the declaration of martial law to its eventual lifting and the president’s impeachment, this work is a record for all who lived through Korea’s shadows.
Affirming her love for the world despite everything, Hwang urges us to see it through sorrow and walk alongside it. For when countless small candles gather together and make one, immense light, the darkness finally yields.
In her short story “Ariadne Garden” from 2020, Sohn Won-pyung imagined the future of elder care facilities. Now she returns with a far larger and more intricate world in A Nation of Youth, combining airtight storytelling of her international bestseller Almond, loved by 1.5 million readers worldwide, with profound insight into our times.
The future that once seemed distant has suddenly arrived, and the reality we thought we would grow used to remains relentlessly bleak. At such a time, we cannot but find ourselves at a crossroads.
It is frightening to see our future selves in Nara, the protagonist standing at the intersection of present and future, forced to make a choice. In this world, individuals are ranked from A to F according to economic capacity—a system that not only assesses the value of their past lives but also determines the treatment they receive.
Caught between a desolate reality and an unreachable paradise, people grow old day by day. Just as the elderly were once young, we too are born, destined to grow old. Within this inevitable end, how long can a manufactured paradise truly remain a utopia?
Writer Kim Choyeop, known for her literary experiments with works like If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, returns after four years with another collection of stories offering the unique solace that only science fiction can provide. Her third short story collection, Two Sides of a Clamshell, presents seven short and medium-length works.
Through the slight opening of a clamshell, we glimpse the world beyond. It stirs in us a desire to reach out to those who are brilliant yet unaware of their own radiance. In observing these undefinable lives that hover at the edges of definition, we come to discover a familiar loneliness and grief.
Kim, who wrote a new chapter in Korean science fiction, tells us through the language of science that our world is clouded by misunderstanding and distortion. She continues to bear quiet witness until the moment a world arrives where we can truly bless and support one another. And if we, too, lend our voices to her relentless effort, perhaps the journey will feel a little less lonely.
As critic Danyo writes, “In the end, it is cheese. It is a story of beings that ceaselessly permeate one another, reshaping themselves in the process.” With Cocktail, Love, Zombie and Tropical Night, Cho Yeeun has established herself as a leading voice in genre fiction. She now returns with A Story of Cheese, a new short story collection that brings together lives mingling with entities we have never encountered before.
The seven stories, published between 2022 and 2024, are eerie and unsettling, yet their closeness to reality lends them credibility, rendering their strangeness “imaginable”—believable. Like cheese, these stories must have quietly aged for years, even before Cho won the Grand Prize in the 2024 Kyobo Story Contest with her novel Shift.
Whether it’s the grotesquerie of the narratives or the almost whimsical and adorable title in contrast, these shockingly dark, modern fairy tales seem to release a sharp, pungent smell of aged cheese.
Maldduks appeared one day without warning. Whatever their cause, Jang believed he had no responsibility. After all, he was just one of countless people struggling to survive each day. Then, this strange, inexplicable appearance of maldduks drove the state to declare martial law.
And now they have drawn even closer to us. Can we be so sure that they have nothing to do with us? For readers unsure how to face misfortune, Kim Hong’s imagination offers an invitation to dive in boldly. Perhaps there you’ll find the courage to smile, even when facing a world more fragile than we ever imagined.
Winner of the 30th Hankyoreh Literary Award, Maldduks received unanimous praise from the judges. It extends feelings of compassion, solidarity, and mourning to those who have stood as bystanders to the world’s tragedies, urging us to put on a brave face and rise to confront everything that may or may not happen. It presents us with the aesthetics of living indebted to one another, for the world that will ultimately be persuaded by chains of memory and help.
The voice of Autumn—who used to say that someone, somewhere seemed to be calling her—still lingers around those left behind. The power of One Night When I Wasn’t There lies in its choice to pause, to turn back to the very moment when a lost hand slipped away.
When long-festering wounds are finally acknowledged, we come to understand that some emotions need time to be fully digested. This book insists that grief must not be silenced, that painful memories must be spoken and shared, through the stories of people desperately trying to find a reason to remember and to continue remembering. Just like how the million-seller author Lee Kkoch-nim carried this story within her for ten years, waiting for the moment it could finally be told.
Imagine the people who breathed in the air in the same space during times we were not there—all the events and times we can’t possibly fathom, and the feelings that still linger in that space. Untying the knots we once bound tightly to avoid getting lost, we stand at the starting line of a new beginning.
When I consider the question “What becomes history?” and the power of the gaze that records, I always think of Lee Geum-yi. On August 15, 1945, Korea was liberated, and yet on that same day, many lost their homeland and families. The weight of lives endured through countless betrayals is impossible to imagine, but in Cracks of Sorrow the story of Joo Danok feels all too familiar. With the release of Cracks of Sorrow, following Can’t I Go Instead? and The Picture Bride, Lee Geum-yi’s trilogy on women’s diaspora during the Japanese colonial period is now complete, nine years after its inception.
The people who moved to Sakhalin, survived through excruciating pain, and devoted their lives to safeguarding their nation’s future—their existence, long hidden, is the reason we must read this story, which brings together love and joy of the past to mend the sorrows of today.
More Content Like This
-
Curation
Our Best Efforts as We Strive Toward the End: New Releases from September and October 2025
마지막을 향해 달려가는 우리의 최선에 관하여, 9월과 10월의 신간 도서입니다
2025.11.13
-
Curation
Swinging That Emerald Light into Summer: New Releases from May and June 2025
푸르른 그 빛을 휘둘러 여름으로, 5월과 6월의 신간 도서입니다.
2025.07.21
-
Curation
A Map of the Heart, Guided by Literature: New Releases from March and April 2025
문학이 이끄는 마음의 지도, 3월과 4월의 신간 도서입니다.
2025.05.27
