Your Republic Is Calling You

This psychological thriller of a North Korean spy living in Seoul is "perhaps the most intriguing and accomplished Korean fiction yet to appear in English" (Kirkus). Foreign film importer Kim Ki-Yong is a family man with a wife and daughter. Living a prosperous life in Seoul, South Korea, he's an aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi. But he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Then, after more than a decade of silence from the home office, he receives a mysterious email stating that he has one day to return to headquarters. But is the message really from Pyongyang--or has he been discovered? And if the message is real, is he being called home to receive new orders or to be executed for a lack of diligence? Spanning the course of a single day, Your Republic Is Calling You delves deep into a gripping family secret to ask whether we ever truly know the people we love. Mining the political and cultural transformations of South Korea since the 1980s, author Young-ha Kim confronts moral questions on small and large scales. "This intense novel's bristling plot--confined to the events of a single day--ironically echoes that of Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses."--Kirkus

About the Author :
Young-ha Kim's I Have the Right to Destroy Myself won Korea's Munhak-dongne prize and was a Border's Original Voices pick upon publication in the United States. He has earned a reputation as the most talented Korean writer of his generation, publishing five novels and three collections of short stories since 1996.

Review :
The romantic belief is that art can either familiarize the strange or estrange the familiar. Now here's a guy who can do both at the same time. Young-ha Kim, very much like his protagonist, is a spy. He is spying on humanity; the secret information he provides is invaluable. --Etgar Keret, author of The Nimrod Flipout What a ride! Young-ha Kim is clearly a writer to watch out for. Your Republic Is Calling You promises to be the breakout book from Korea. Through his compelling narration of events happening in a single day, he leads us into the heart and soul of modern Korea and tells us and what it means to be human in a world bristling with borders. I cannot praise it enough. --Vikas Swarup, author of Slumdog Millionaire Your Republic Is Calling You is that rare thing, a novel that is simultaneously suspenseful and meditative, an intriguingly provocative novel about freedom, duty, and inevitability. This highly-charged novel kept me up half the night, turning pages; I spent the other half wide awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking and thinking about it. --Dean Bakopoulos, author of Please Don't Come Back from the Moon An ordinary day in the life of a North Korean film distributor turns into an extraordinary adventure when it is revealed that he is a South Korean sleeper agent. Young-ha Kim narrates the formidable choice that his hero will have to make with unflinching honesty and masterful suspense. Your Republic is Calling You is a thoroughly engrossing book. --Laila Lalami, author of Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits and Secret Son[An] ambitious novel from one of Korea's most admired writers . . . Energized by a powerful sense of the difficulty of 'belonging' in a dangerous place and time. Perhaps the most intriguing and accomplished Korean fiction yet to appear in English translation. -- Kirkus Reviews Deeply compelling . . .a riveting tale of espionage along with keen observations of human behavior. -- Publishers Weekly