Lemon

Description

Focusing on the unsolved murder of teenage girl, this literary crime novel offers insights into gender, class and privilege in Seoul, and marks the English-language debut for award-winning Korean author, Kwon Yeo-sun. 'A haunting literary crime story ... Razor-sharp observations of class, gender and privilege in contemporary Korea' Cosmopolitan.

In the summer of 2002, nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be pinned. The case went cold. Seventeen years pass without justice, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she's lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened. Told at different points in time from the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on's classmates, Lemon is a piercing psychological portrait that takes the shape of a crime novel and is a must-read novel of 2021. -'With taut, steely prose, Kwon burrows into the details surrounding the shocking murder of a beautiful girl. Though Lemon takes the form of a mystery and there's psychological suspense that will grip you all the way to the end, it isn't just a whodunnit. Hidden on every page are explorations of grief and guilt, how one should go on after a tragedy. It jolts with its brilliance and tartness. It's simply electric' Kyung-sook Shin, author of Please Look After Mother