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Baik Sou-linne’s first full-length novel, released 12 years since her debut. With her distinctive, empathetic sentences, she depicts a girl who had been living unable to forgive herself for years, and only later does her heart stir while undergoing true healing and growth through her own personal efforts. Protagonist Hae-mi is a young girl who diligently lies in order to console the griefs of others. In the 1994 Gas Explosion Accident, her older sister died and afterwards, she, her mom, and her younger sister moved to Germany. She had lied so that other people could feel more secure, but she gradually starts to recover while spending time with the group of nurses who had been send over from Korea to work in Germany there. Among the migrant workers who came to support their families are her own relative Aunt Haeng-ja, Aunt Maria, who came to live a liberated lifestyle, and quiet Aunt Sun-ja, who still cannot forget her first love K.H. Together with the children of the Aunts, Lena and Han-su, Hae-mi spends a lot of time trying to find Aunt Sun-ja’s first love, and gradually regains her innocence, though she has to abruptly return back to Korea in the aftermath of the 1997 financial crisis after experiencing another huge loss.

Having become accustomed to the loss Hae-mi becomes an adult expert on hiding herself, and after reuniting with her college sweetheart, Woo-jae, she reads the Aunt’s diary one more time to find more clues about Sun-ja’s first love K.H. Hae-mi eventually musters the courage to make a step forward by facing her younger self that had been broken in the process of enduring suffering.

BAIK SOU-LINNE

She started her writing career after winning 2011 Kyunghyang Shinmun New Writer’s Contest. of the 11th Munhakdongne Young Author Award. Among her works are short story collections FALLING IN PAUL, WRETCHED LIGHT, and THE SUMMER VILLA, novella ‘To Love And To Be Loved’, short novel ‘Please Don’t Be Away Tonight’, and essay collections AFFECTIONATE DAY BY DAY and HAPPY FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A WHILE. She won the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, Hyundae Munhak Award, Yi Hae-jo Literary Novel Award, Moon-ji Literary Award, Kim Seung-ok Literary Award, and the Munhakdongne Young Author Award.