Translated by Anton Hur

'Violets lavishes attention on the kind of person who often slips through the cracks, unseen or ignored. There is a beauty and a bravery in speaking for small lives' Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You

South Korea, 1970.

San is a lonely child, ostracised from her community. She soon finds a friend in a girl called Namae, until one afternoon changes everything. Following a moment of intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently rejects San, setting her on a troubling path.

We next meet San, aged twenty-two, when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul's bustling city centre. Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San is introduced to a curious cast of characters - the mute shop owner, a brash co-worker, kind farmers and aggressive customers - and, fuelled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer.

Throughout it all, San's moment with Namae continues to linger in the back of her mind.

A story of thwarted desire, misogyny and erasure, Violets reveals the high stakes involved in one woman's desperate search for both autonomy and attachment in an unforgiving society.

"Violets is a novel built on the proximity of beauty and violence . . . Shin finds indirect and nuanced ways to conjure the atmosphere of a place where flourishing is thwarted at every turn . . . There's a timeless, fable-like quality to the narration that makes the story strange and gripping." - Guardian

"Dreamy, immersive and evocative . . . What Shin does well in Violets . . . is the portrayal of the disappointments, desires, regrets and loneliness of everywoman characters on the fringes of society. San's failures - to get a respectable job, to have her own writing desk, to be acknowledged by the man she desires - are depicted with credibility and tenderness" - TLS

"Shin is known for revealing the ways in which her culture oppresses and isolates people - especially women" - Kirkus

"[Anton] Hur, who made his translated-novel debut with Shin's The Court Dancer (2018) and became an award-winning Korean-to-English powerhouse, returns to adroitly cipher her latest impressive import. With this trigger-warning-worthy tale, Man Asian Literary Prize-winning Shin delivers another meticulous, haunting characterization of an isolated young woman in crisis" - Booklist (starred)

"'A disturbing and evocative look at an isolated young woman . . . With sensuous prose intuitively translated by [Anton] Hur, Shin vividly captures San's tragic failure to connect with others. This is hard to put down'" - Publishers Weekly

"A formidable text on urban loneliness, suppressed queer desire and a haunting observation of the rapidly-changing country at the turn of the century. Originally written in 2001, this soon-to-be-released translation is a tragic yet moving work of fiction from one of Korea's finest writers that should be on your spring-summer reading list." - Vogue India

"Reading Kyung-Sook Shin's Violets is a dreamlike experience. Translated lyrically by Anton Hur, it evokes the curious, detached sensation of moving-nearly floating-through a world that, despite its different logic, is grounded and punctuated with precise, vivid details, almost overwhelming in sudden close-up . . . a shimmering text that blends stark violence with delicate, considered language, preserving, with tender attention, a woman rejected and erased by society." - Asymptote

"A raw coming-of-age novel" - Bustle