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The Tank
- Faith and prayerCult-like phenomenaModern alienation
- Categories:Contemporary
- Language:Korean（Translation Services Available）
- Publication Place:South Korea
- Publication date:July,2023
- Pages:280
- Retail Price:（Unknown）
- Size:150mm×210mm
- Text Color:（Unknown）
- Words:（Unknown）
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Copyright Sold
Taiwan,China(Traditional Ch.)
Feature
★ Rights sold to Taiwan!
★ Winner of the 28th Hangyoreh Literary Award!
★ The debut full-length novel of a film-industry sound mixer, with imagery like a literary film: Author Kim Hee-jae is a sound mixer in the film industry, with no formal creative writing training—this book is his debut full-length novel. The story is divided into four major parts, unfolding through the perspectives of various people connected to a fire incident, with powerfully vivid imagery, like watching a literary film.
★ Interweaving diverse real-world issues, ultimately landing on love: The work interweaves disaster, cult-like phenomena, and the survival predicaments of youth, ultimately landing on love: only faith in love can sustain a person to keep living, and make the hard world change just a little. The novel delicately depicts people breaking free from the shells of blind conformity and fanaticism, and after the hardship of understanding others, arrives at a cautious optimism.
★ Winner of the 28th Hangyoreh Literary Award!
★ The debut full-length novel of a film-industry sound mixer, with imagery like a literary film: Author Kim Hee-jae is a sound mixer in the film industry, with no formal creative writing training—this book is his debut full-length novel. The story is divided into four major parts, unfolding through the perspectives of various people connected to a fire incident, with powerfully vivid imagery, like watching a literary film.
★ Interweaving diverse real-world issues, ultimately landing on love: The work interweaves disaster, cult-like phenomena, and the survival predicaments of youth, ultimately landing on love: only faith in love can sustain a person to keep living, and make the hard world change just a little. The novel delicately depicts people breaking free from the shells of blind conformity and fanaticism, and after the hardship of understanding others, arrives at a cautious optimism.
Description
The title “Tank” refers to an empty, sealed container placed on the back hill of a remote mountain village—about five pyeong in area—serving as a space for prayer. There is no cult leader here, no fixed doctrine; only the space itself exists. People come here to pray, believing that “if you pray with faith in your heart, the best things will eventually come to me.”
One day, a forest fire breaks out near the “sacred area,” the entrance to the tank, and a man is trapped inside the tank and burns to death. Why did this man—who prayed so devoutly, hoping for the future of his dreams to arrive—die? And why did he have to die?
Through the unique autonomous prayer space of the “tank,” the novel writes of the maladies of our present age: when people can no longer bring themselves to trust society, trapped in the predicament of self-reflection, how ordinary people desperately struggle to keep living.
The story is divided into four major parts, unfolding through the perspectives of various people connected to the fire incident, with powerfully vivid imagery, like watching a literary film.
Character threads:
Do-seon: A once-promising screenwriter who fell into a long creative slump, went through a divorce, and was drawn to the tank. On the day of the fire, she happened to be there and was met head-on by billowing black smoke.
Yang-woo: An ordinary factory worker who met and fell in love with “Dudu” through a chat app. After a fierce argument, Dudu inexplicably disappears, and upon receiving a message, Yang-woo rushes to the tank.
Hwang Gyeong-gyeong: The founder of the tank, who inherited the vision of its original conceiver, Ruben, and opened the “Tank Era.” Son Bu-gyeong is her half-sister, who also manages tank reservations. Upon hearing news of the fire, the two also rush to the scene.
Dudu: The young person who died in the fire, longing for their identity to be accepted by family; his father, Kang Gyu-san, could never accept his child‘s identity, and in the end can only face the child’s cold remains.
After the fire, founder Hwang Gyeong-gyeong is detained, and rumours about this “wish-granting container” spread everywhere. Do-seon repeatedly has nightmares in which the faces of the dead, dangling limbs, and agonised cries keep appearing.
To investigate Dudu‘s suspicious death, Do-seon begins writing a story about him; Yang-woo happens to read what Do-seon has written and decides to meet her. On the very site where the tank burned down, a brand-new tank is erected once again.
The new tank also meets with fire, but the tank seems impossible to destroy, springing up again and again in various places. The survivors each face their loss, asking what faith is, what prayer is.
This is a “religious novel for a godless age,” exploring faith itself. The people in the book pray not out of superstition about miracles and gods, but so that words of love can be conveyed and heard. The novel delicately depicts people breaking free from the shells of blind conformity and fanaticism, and after the hardship of understanding others, arrives at a cautious optimism. The work interweaves disaster, sexual minorities, cult-like phenomena, and the survival predicaments of youth, ultimately landing on love: only faith in love can sustain a person to keep living, and make the hard world change just a little.
A quote from the book: Some beliefs have nothing to do with choice—they are things you must cling to for dear life in order to survive.
One day, a forest fire breaks out near the “sacred area,” the entrance to the tank, and a man is trapped inside the tank and burns to death. Why did this man—who prayed so devoutly, hoping for the future of his dreams to arrive—die? And why did he have to die?
Through the unique autonomous prayer space of the “tank,” the novel writes of the maladies of our present age: when people can no longer bring themselves to trust society, trapped in the predicament of self-reflection, how ordinary people desperately struggle to keep living.
The story is divided into four major parts, unfolding through the perspectives of various people connected to the fire incident, with powerfully vivid imagery, like watching a literary film.
Character threads:
Do-seon: A once-promising screenwriter who fell into a long creative slump, went through a divorce, and was drawn to the tank. On the day of the fire, she happened to be there and was met head-on by billowing black smoke.
Yang-woo: An ordinary factory worker who met and fell in love with “Dudu” through a chat app. After a fierce argument, Dudu inexplicably disappears, and upon receiving a message, Yang-woo rushes to the tank.
Hwang Gyeong-gyeong: The founder of the tank, who inherited the vision of its original conceiver, Ruben, and opened the “Tank Era.” Son Bu-gyeong is her half-sister, who also manages tank reservations. Upon hearing news of the fire, the two also rush to the scene.
Dudu: The young person who died in the fire, longing for their identity to be accepted by family; his father, Kang Gyu-san, could never accept his child‘s identity, and in the end can only face the child’s cold remains.
After the fire, founder Hwang Gyeong-gyeong is detained, and rumours about this “wish-granting container” spread everywhere. Do-seon repeatedly has nightmares in which the faces of the dead, dangling limbs, and agonised cries keep appearing.
To investigate Dudu‘s suspicious death, Do-seon begins writing a story about him; Yang-woo happens to read what Do-seon has written and decides to meet her. On the very site where the tank burned down, a brand-new tank is erected once again.
The new tank also meets with fire, but the tank seems impossible to destroy, springing up again and again in various places. The survivors each face their loss, asking what faith is, what prayer is.
This is a “religious novel for a godless age,” exploring faith itself. The people in the book pray not out of superstition about miracles and gods, but so that words of love can be conveyed and heard. The novel delicately depicts people breaking free from the shells of blind conformity and fanaticism, and after the hardship of understanding others, arrives at a cautious optimism. The work interweaves disaster, sexual minorities, cult-like phenomena, and the survival predicaments of youth, ultimately landing on love: only faith in love can sustain a person to keep living, and make the hard world change just a little.
A quote from the book: Some beliefs have nothing to do with choice—they are things you must cling to for dear life in order to survive.
Author
Kim Hee-jae
In 2023, he won the Hangyoreh Literary Award for his novel The Tank, thereby beginning his literary career. He has published the full-length novel The Tank and the short story Mars and an Attempt at Creativity.
Recent works: We Once Lived in the Same Castle, Thirty Prompts, Mars and an Attempt at Creativity, and others—10 works in total.
In 2023, he won the Hangyoreh Literary Award for his novel The Tank, thereby beginning his literary career. He has published the full-length novel The Tank and the short story Mars and an Attempt at Creativity.
Recent works: We Once Lived in the Same Castle, Thirty Prompts, Mars and an Attempt at Creativity, and others—10 works in total.
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