Lemon
Kwon Yeo-sun
Kim Hae-on, eighteen, is killed in Seoul in 2002 in a case the press calls the High School Beauty Murder, two men are questioned and nobody is charged. Eight sections spread across years are narrated by her younger sister Da-on and two former classmates, so the book is about the watching rather than the killing. The Korean original was published by Changbi in 2019 and the year here is that first edition; the link is Janet Hong's English translation, Other Press 2021.
Why you should read this
Read this for a literary thriller structured around an unsolved teenage murder, circling the crime years later through shifting, unreliable narrators instead of resolving it. Best for readers who want ambiguity and psychological aftermath over a conventional whodunit payoff.
- Field
- Literature
- Form
- Fiction
- Published
- 2019
- Themes
- ContemporaryEast AsianFiction
