Your Neighbour's Table

Gu Byeong-mo, Chi-young Kim

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English

WILDFIRE
10 December 2024

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Fiction in translation; Feminism & feminist theory

'An important literary piece of feminist activism'

'Taps into the everyday minutiae of motherhood, baring to all the unspoken labours that women take on both inside and out of parenthood'

'Really made me reflect on what it actually means to be a part of a community'

'Given recent news stories this feels like an incredibly relevant read'

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From the award-winning Korean author Gu Byeong-mo and International Booker-nominated translator Chi-Young Kim, comes a thought-provoking story of community and the cultural expectations of motherhood.

What are you willing to sacrifice for a 'better' life?

When Yojin moves with her husband and daughter into the Dream Future Pilot Communal Apartments, she's ready for a fresh start. Located on the outskirts of Seoul, the experimental community is a government initiative designed to boost the national birth rate. Like her neighbours, Yojin has agreed to have at least two more children over the next ten years.

Yet, from the day she arrives, Yojin feels uneasy about the community spirit thrust upon her. Her concerns grow as communal child care begins and the other parents show their true colours. Your Neighbour's Table traces the lives of four women in the apartments, all with different aspirations and beliefs.

Will they find a way to live peacefully? Or are society's expectations stacked against them from the start?

A trenchant social novel from an award-winning author, Your Neighbour's Table incisively illuminates the unspoken imbalance of women's parenting labour and the challenges of working towards a better life.

[Published in North America with the title APARTMENT WOMEN]

By: Gu Byeong-mo
Translated by: Chi-young Kim
Imprint: WILDFIRE
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 214mm, Width: 134mm, Spine: 22mm
Weight: 225g
ISBN: 9781035416479
ISBN 10: 1035416476
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 10 December 2024
Audience: General/trade , College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Gu Byeong-mo was born in 1976 in Seoul. She studied Korean language and literature at Kyung Hee University, and worked as an editor. She made her literary debut with the novel Wizard Bakery (2009), which won the Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction. It became bestseller in Korea and was translated into many different languages. Her short story collection Hoping That It Wasn't Only Me (2015) received Writer of the Year Award and Hwang Sun-won Literary Award for New Writers.

Reviews for Your Neighbour's Table

Reading this incisive, delicate and wholly original book, I found that words like 'family', 'neighbor', 'nature', and 'community' no longer evoked warm and bountiful images in me. They gave me a chill. And I know that this is reality. -- Cho Nam-Joo, author of KIM JI YOUNG BORN IN 1982 Gu Byeong-mo's Your Neighbour's Table is a sharp examination of the boundary between the utopic ideals of community and the dystopian realities of late capitalism. The characters - beautifully drawn, full of flaws and wholly human - live side-by-side in a tense intimacy that haunted me long after I put the book down. -- Sarah Ruiz-Grossman, author of A FIRE SO WILD Under the smooth surface of the table, the readers may perceive the dissonance between the ones who wants to have close and friendly relationship with their neighbours, sharing their daily lives, and the ones who can't afford it. There are conflicts over delicate issues regarding their community and crossing of the line. The author relentlessly reveals the dark side of the word 'warm community' that we have so far been using without questioning. * Korea Herald * Gu Byeong-mo's novel Your Neighbour's Table asks a provocative question. Rebelling against the social norms and conventions, she invites us to look again at things we have taken for granted. * Hankyoreh Daily Newspaper * The book makes us rethink about problems that stem from child-rearing and caring labour in today's Korean society. * News Tomato *