Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun, trans. Janet Hong

Seoul, summer 2002. South Korea is gripped by World Cup fever when nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on is found dead in a park. Two suspects, one alibi, no conviction. The case goes cold.

Lemon follows the aftermath – specifically Hae-on's younger sister Da-on and two of her classmates, each still shaped by her death years later. The novel spans seventeen years in eight short sections, shifting perspectives and withholding as much as it reveals. It takes the shape of a crime novel, but the murder is almost beside the point. Kwon uses the well-worn form to craft an exploration of privilege, jealousy, trauma, and how we live with the wrongs we have endured and inflicted in turn.

The Guardian called it "eerie beauty brought to crime fiction"; The Spectator "an idiosyncratic and beguiling mystery." Vulture noted Hong's translation as "spare, lyrical," describing the novel as "a shrewd diagnosis of a culture that disempowers women."
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Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver. Her translations include Han Yujoo's The Impossible Fairy Tale, Ha Seong-nan's Bluebeard's First Wife, and Keum Suk Gendry-Kim's Grass. She has received the TA First Translation Prize and the LTI Korea Translation Award.