★ Rights sold to Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese.
★ The winning full-length novel for the 30th anniversary of the Hangyoreh Literary Award, standing out among 349 entries: This book is the winning work commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Hangyoreh Literary Award, selected from a total of 349 submissions. The eight judges offered high praise: the story is thoroughly engaging, the writing brisk, keenly reflecting the times, and refusing didactic narration; it directly confronts the current political landscape and the crises of our era, responding through literature. It has been described as “a significant work that echoes the thirty-year trajectory of the Hangyoreh Literary Award and re-proves that literature remains an effective vehicle of ethics.”
★ A strange premise: the wrongfully dead transform into “stakes,” marching from the sea into the city: The novel constructs a bizarre premise: those who died wrongfully, in bitter loneliness, or without a name undergo adipocere transformation, turning into “stakes” that appear throughout the city. The story unfolds around the mystery of the stakes’ appearance and disappearance, examining a corrupt political and capitalist system; depicting the struggles of ordinary citizens under the system to hold onto their sense of self; writing of the compassion and connection that ordinary people ought to possess; and offering a panoramic examination of 21st-century Korean society.
★ Over a decade in the making—a significant work responding to the crises of our era through literature: The conception of this book first began in 2014 and was completed after more than ten years of refinement. Through a fantasy shell, the story tells of labour tragedies and the pain of unnamed deaths, interrogating social death, collective mourning, and the connections between people. Even when the world is absurd and cruel, it still believes that remembering our debts to one another and our kindness is a force against indifference.

“The stakes walked from the sea into the city, and from the city they came before me.”

The novel constructs a bizarre premise: those who died wrongfully, in bitter loneliness, or without a name undergo adipocere transformation, turning into “stakes” that appear throughout the city. The story unfolds around the mystery of the stakes’ appearance and disappearance, examining a corrupt political and capitalist system; depicting the struggles of ordinary citizens under the system to hold onto their sense of self; writing of the compassion and connection that ordinary people ought to possess; and offering a panoramic examination of 21st-century Korean society.

A stake could be a foreign labourer killed by poisoning at a smelting plant, a delivery worker struck by a truck after consecutive sleepless nights, or a child lost in a car accident—all of these belong to social death. The work traces and reviews this social death and collective grief. Multiple judges commented: the ethics of mourning and solidarity in the work carry a rare narrative vitality, sinking deep into the reader‘s heart like a sturdy stake; it sharply captures the intersection of personal misfortune and the suffering of the times, and its narrative boldly overturns conventional notions of fiction.

The protagonist, “Jang,” is a bank loan officer who is inexplicably caught up in a bizarre incident and locked in the trunk of a car. His life collapses one blow after another: his engagement falls apart, and he loses his superior’s trust at work. He mocks his own humble origins internally, yet still hopes to turn things around—but misfortune comes one after another, and no one around him takes his side. Then more bad news arrives: his old close friend Tae-i has died. While receiving the belongings, he re-examines the long-standing misunderstandings between them.

Stakes keep washing ashore by the sea, and large numbers of them land on the coast, causing widespread social chaos, while the government is powerless to respond. Merely standing before a stake makes people weep uncontrollably; workers in white protective suits come to carry the stakes away, but after they are cleared, the stakes appear again. The stakes surge from the sea to the shore and spread into the city, step by step approaching ordinary people. Some see them as a source of unease, others as a massive threat.

As the past of the stakes is gradually revealed, a certain action Jang himself took decades ago turns out to be entangled with all of this. Hostility and attempts to win him over come at him in turns, strange events occur one after another, and he can no longer tell whom he can trust.

Can Jang break free from the misfortunes that come one after another and recover a whole life? Can a society confronted with an unknown, alien existence overcome its fear and build a true community?

The novel enters through the series of unbelievable misfortunes of an ordinary man, Jang. In a capitalist new-class society packaged in convenience and rationality, it gives concrete form to those easily erased social deaths as “stakes.” When the stakes march from the sea into the city, people weep for no reason. It sharply criticises the confusion and numbness of corporations and government systems in the face of tragedy. Blending surreal imagination with a realistic foundation, and paired with the author‘s characteristic rhythmic prose, it combines profound social awareness with reading pleasure.

Excerpt from the text: “A heart that owes no one is barren. There is a kind of person in this world who, in order not to forget the heart each has given the other, solemnly writes their bonds into a notebook, and carries that memory of indebtedness through an entire life. May the day come when, with this, we can persuade the world.”

【Story Outline】
Jang, a bank employee, watches his real life collapse step by step—he is bizarrely kidnapped, loses love and work, and then faces the death of a friend. At this moment, the legend comes true: those who died unjustly transform into adipocere “stakes,” continuously landing from the ocean and spreading across city squares and streets. The stakes stir up sorrow in the hearts of onlookers, and the authorities can only repeatedly collect them without being able to eradicate them.

Amid this phenomenon sweeping across society, the protagonist discovers a hidden connection between his own past and the stake incidents. Through a fantasy shell, the story tells of labour tragedies and the pain of unnamed deaths, interrogating social death, collective mourning, and the connections between people. Even when the world is absurd and cruel, it still believes that remembering our debts to one another and our kindness is a force against indifference.

Kim Hong

Born in Seoul in 1986.
Made his literary debut in 2017 through the Dong-A Ilbo New Year Literary Contest. He has won the Munhakdongne Novel Award.
Short story collections: We Will Come to Find You, Please Don’t Cry Here
Novels: Smoking Oreo, Woo-woo, The King of Prices!!!, The Stake

The conception of The Stake first began in 2014 and was completed after more than ten years of refinement.