Author: Kim Bo-Young

First the flood
Next the sickness
Last the change

Visionary Korean author Kim Bo-Young unleashes a Lovecraftian nightmare of infection, transformation, and abomination.

"[Kim Bo-Young's] fiction is a breathtaking piece of a cinematic art." --Bong Joon Ho, Academy Award-winning director of Parasite

While waiting for a train to Haewon, an isolated Korean seaside village, bodyguard Mu-young gets a disaster alert on her phone. TVs throughout the station report breaking news of a massive earthquake on the eastern coast. Despite the danger, Mu-young boards the train with her niece: she'd rather face the earthquake than leave the girl in her mother's care. That choice haunts her for the rest of her life.

Three years later, Haewon Village is home to horrors. The earthquake unleashed an ancient plague that transforms its victims into fishy monsters, and the government's lockdown has cut off any hope for help. Mu-young's niece is dead, and all that's left for her is to hunt villagers who break isolation. When an officious bureaucrat from Seoul arrives in the village, he stirs up even deeper trouble. Will Mu-young survive? Does she even deserve to?

Publisher: Macmillan Publishers (MPS)
Published: 08/11/2026
Pages: 112
Binding Type: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781250380753

About the Author
Kim Bo-Young is one of Korea's most unique and important authors. Her first published work of fiction, a novella titled The Experience of Touch, unanimously won the award for the best novella at the Korean Science & Technology Creative Writing Awards in 2004. In 2010 she published a two-volume collection of short stories, The Story Goes That Far and An Evolutionary Myth. 2013 saw the publication of her first novel, The Seven Executioners, which won the South Korean SF Award. Kim's work enjoys widespread popularity in Korea and has been praised by award-winning film directors Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon Ho. She acted as a script advisor for Bong's 2013 film Snowpiercer