Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop: A Novel

Front Cover
Bloomsbury USA, Feb 20, 2024 - Fiction - 320 pages

AN INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER
INDIE NEXT PICK * Debutiful Most Anticipated Book of 2024 * Powell's Pick of the Month

The Korean smash hit available for the first time in English, a slice-of-life novel for readers of Matt Haig's The Midnight Library and Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of AJ Fikry.

Yeongju is burned out. She did everything she was supposed to: go to school, marry a decent man, get a respectable job. Then it all fell apart. In a leap of faith, Yeongju abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, and follows her dream. She opens a bookshop. In a quaint neighborhood in Seoul, surrounded by books, Yeongju and her customers take refuge. From the lonely barista to the unhappily married coffee roaster-and the writer who sees something special in Yeongju-they all have disappointments in their past. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop becomes the place where they all learn how to truly live.

A heartwarming story about finding acceptance in your life and the healing power of books, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is a gentle reminder that it's never too late to scrap the plot and start again.

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About the author (2024)

Hwang Bo-reum studied Computer Science and worked as a software engineer. She wrote several essay collections: I Read Every Day, I Tried Kickboxing for the First Time and This Distance is Perfect. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is her first novel, which has sold over 150,000 copies in Korea and been sold into 9 territories. Before its release as a paperback, the novel was initially published as an e-book after winning an open contest co-organised by Korean content-publishing platform 'Brunch'. Shanna Tan is a Singaporean translator working from Korean, Chinese and Japanese into English. She was selected for two emerging literary translator mentorships in 2022, where she was mentored by Anton Hur and Julia Sanches. Her prose translations have appeared in The Southern Review, The Common, Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture and more.

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