City of Ash and Red

September 10, 2018
This disturbing, Kafkaesque tale from Pyun (The Hole) charts the career of an unnamed man from an unnamed country, who has been “a product developer at a pest control firm” that specializes in rats—a Sisyphean task, given that many rodents survive any efforts at eradication. For an obscure reason, the man is transferred to Country C, where he’s detained by health inspectors concerned about a new virus that has been spreading like wildfire globally. When he’s finally released, he finds that his new lodgings are in District 4, an island built on a landfill, whose streets are filled with trash. The man’s luggage, which included most of his possessions, is stolen, and his boss tells him not to report to work, pending an internal company review that will take over a week. The parallels between the man’s new life and the lives of rats are a bit heavy-handed, and once Pyun reveals that the man has committed marital rape, some readers will lose interest in his fate. Still, those with a taste for creepy suspense will be rewarded.

September 15, 2018
A man's new job in an unfamiliar country becomes a fast descent into a psychological and literal version of hell.An unnamed man in an unidentified time frame is sent to Country C to work a high-level extermination job. He immediately finds that his new home is barely survivable: The street is overrun with vermin and garbage, stink pervades the air, his job is suddenly postponed, and his only suitcase is stolen as soon as he hits town. He receives no explanation, and nobody there or at home is looking out for his welfare. Meanwhile, the city's been overtaken by a deadly virus, about which nobody seems to know the exact causes or symptoms. Then things really start to go wrong. Once he manages to connect with someone back home, he learns that his ex-wife was murdered on his departure day and that he is the prime suspect. When police arrive at his lodging, he escapes through a window and must now live in the sewers with the homeless, knowing that anyone suspected of having the virus is likely to be incinerated. In flashbacks he relives his troubled marriage for clues of how he got there. Pyun leave one big hole in the plot (if there is news media, why does the man not know what awaits him in Country C?), and she robs the story of political resonance by not describing how the world got to the state it's in.As a story of one man's struggle to maintain sanity against the odds, it's both consistently gripping and consistently bleak.

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October 15, 2018
The first collaboration between Pyun and translator Kim-Russell, The Hole? (2017), introduced one of Korea's most lauded writers to Anglophone readers. Kim-Russell's ability to replicate Pyun's stifling terror repeats here as he presents a nameless antihero, known only as the man. Leaving behind envious fellow employees, he's transferred to Country C to work at the main office of a pest-extermination company. Detained overnight at the airport for being a potential health risk in a nation already plagued by a deadly virus, the man finally arrives at his prearranged apartment in a district built over a reclaimed landfill, which is oozing with filthy waste. His suitcase is stolen, including his phone, which severs any connections to his previous life. His attempt to find someone to release the dog he abandoned at home sets in motion a fugitive's odyssey marked by murder, park-bench wars, sewer hideaways, and rats. Stripped of identity, language, and ethics, the cost of survival for Pyun's protagonist proves to be his very humanity. A slap-in-the-face parable of the perils of society's failures, Pyun's suffocating tale reveals a future all too possible and real.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)