hwagil

A compulsively readable and razor-sharp campus novel about the impact of power and consent in a university setting

Perfect for fans of Cho Nam-joo, I May Destroy You, and If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio

Riveting and uncompromising, Another Person explores the long-lasting consequences of the sexism and misogyny fostered in universities.

Vacuum cleaner bitch.

When Jina sees this anonymous comment on a forum it forces her out of her stupor. It is posted on a website dissecting her public allegations of workplace sexual assault, the backlash to which forced her to quit her job. She has spent months glued to her laptop screen, junk-food packaging piling up around her, tracking the hate campaign that’s raging against her online. This post stands out from the noise, for it could only have been made by someone who knew her as a student at university.

The comment stirs something deeply repressed. So Jina returns to Anjin University, and to the toxic culture that destroyed the lives of many female students including one, Ha Yuri, who died tragically and mysteriously not long before Jina left. Somewhere within Jina’s memories is the truth about what happened to Yuri all those years ago.

Told in alternating viewpoints, in sharp, intelligent and multi-layered prose, this powerful and necessary novel confronts issues of sexism and abuse on university campuses.

Kang Hwagil is one of South Korea’s new group of ’young feminists’. Her writing has received numerous accolades, most recently the 2020 Munhakdongne Young Writers’ Award for short story Eumbok. She has published two short story collections, A Decent Person (2016) and White Horse (2020), as well as two novels, Another Person (2017), which won the Hankyoreh Literary Award the same year, and The Haunting of Daebul Hotel (2021).

Clare Richards is an editor and translator from Korean, with a key interest in feminist literary fiction. She is the recipient of grants and awards from the National Centre for Writing, Literature Translation Institute of Korea and The Korea Times, amongst others. Her translation of Kang Hwagil’s prize-winning short story The Lake was published by The Massachusetts Review in 2022. Another Person is Clare’s debut novel translation.