The Woman Who Climbed on the Roof

From the writer and translator duo of A Magical Girl Retires, a powerful historical novel about labour activism in Japanese-occupied Korea.

Set against the backdrop of Japanese-occupied Korea, Capitalists Must Starve follows a sharp-tongued, big-hearted heroine who dares to love, rebel, and carve out space for working-class women in a world determined to silence them. Echoing the unflinching narratives of Alias Grace and the sweeping historical vision of Pachinko, this feminist historical novel balances raw grit with unexpected tenderness and a defiant streak of dark humour.

A stirring portrait of resistance from below: fierce, funny, and full of fight.

Park Seolyeon was born in Cheorwon, South Korea. She made her debut by winning the journal Silcheon Munhak’s New Author Prize and received the 2018 Hankyoreh Literary Award for her novel The Woman Who Climbed on the Roof. Her work includes the novels Martha’s Job and The Shirley Club, as well as the short-story collections Your Mom’s the Better Player and Me, Me, Madeline. She is the recipient of the 2023 Yi Sang Literary Prize and the 2021 Munhakdongne Young Writers Award. She lives in Seoul and writes in a variety of forms and genres, with a focus on gender and labour.

Anton Hur was born in Stockholm. He is the author of Toward Eternity and has been nominated for the International Booker Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Dublin Literary Award for his various translations including Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park and A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon. He lives in Seoul.