Mina

“Kim Sagwa is South Korea’s young, brilliant, fearless writer. In Mina, Kim has created a frenzied language of three teenagers—Mina, Minho, & Crystal—living in ‘P City,’ which in Korean sounds the same as ‘Blood City.’ Beneath the immaculately manicured middle-class affluence, chandelier glitter, free-market economy, & Western cultural hegemony runs the blood of Korea’s dictatorial conformity & historical fratricide. The trio are hollow teenagers in the age of globalization—they mirror one another, reflecting, deflecting, & signaling their helplessness & hatred for the world that has created them. Mina is a story of ‘abjection,’ to borrow Kristeva’s term—a state in which ‘meaning collapses.’ Mina leads us to a place where mirrors of the self & world fold, collapse, shatter, & bleed to death. Mina is one of Bruce & Ju-Chan Fulton’s finest translations.” — Don Mee Choi, author of Hardly War“She doesn’t know what to do, & that amounts to a state of torture.”Crystal toils day & night to earn top grades at her cram school. She’s also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her mp3s, & fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. Her non-stop frenzy never quite manages the one thing that might calm her down: opening up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She certainly hasn’t talked with her best friend, Mina, nor Mina’s brother, whom she’s developing a serious crush on. And Crystal’s starting to lose her grip.In this shocking English debut, award-winning Korean author Kim Sagwa delivers an astonishingly complex portrait of modern-day adolescence. With pitch-perfect dialogue & a precise eye for detail, Kim creates a piercingly real teen protagonist–at once powerful, vulnerable, & utterly confused. As one bad decision leads to another, this promising life spirals to a devastating climax. "Kim Sagwa is South Korea's young, brilliant, fearless writer." — Don Mee Choi, author of Hardly War "She doesn't know what to do, and that amounts to a state of torture." Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She's also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her mp3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. Her non- stop frenzy never quite manages the one thing that might calm her down: opening up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She certainly hasn't talked with her best friend, Mina, nor Mina's brother, whom she's developing a serious crush on. And Crystal's starting to lose her grip. In this shocking English debut, award-winning Korean author Kim Sagwa delivers an astonishingly complex portrait of modern-day adolescence. With pitch-perfect dialogue and a precise eye for detail, Kim creates a piercingly real teen protagonist—at once powerful,... Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She?s also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her mp3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. Her non-0stop frenzy never quite manages the one thing that might calm her down: opening up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She certainly hasn?t talked with her best friend, Mina, nor Mina?s brother, whom she?s developing a serious crush on. And Crystal?s starting to lose her grip. In this shocking English debut, award-winning Korean author Kim Sagwa delivers an astonishingly complex portrait of modern-day adolescence. With pitch-perfect dialogue and a precise eye for detail, Kim creates a piercingly real teen protagonist?at once powerful, vulnerable, and utterly confused. As one bad decision leads to another, this promising life spirals to a devastating climax Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She's also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her MP3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. But her nonstop frenzy never lets her do the one thing that might change her tragic fate: open up about the pressures that are driving her to the edge. She certainly hasn't talked with her best friend, Mina, nor Mina's brother, whom she's developing a serious crush on. And Crystal's starting to lose her grip