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    Diary of a Murderer: And Other Stories
    Diary of a Murderer: And Other Stories
    Diary of a Murderer: And Other Stories
    Ebook207 pages4 hours

    Diary of a Murderer: And Other Stories

    By Young-ha Kim

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    This collection from the acclaimed South Korean author is “filled with the kind of sublime, galvanizing stories that strike like a lightning bolt” (Nylon).

     

    Diary of a Murderer captivates and provokes in equal measure, exploring what it means to be on the edge—between life and death, good and evil. In the titular novella, a former serial killer suffering from memory loss sets his sights on one final target: his daughter’s boyfriend, who he suspects is also a serial killer.

    In other stories we witness an affair between two childhood friends that questions the limits of loyalty and love; a family’s disintegration after a baby son is kidnapped and recovered years later; and a wild, erotic ride about pursuing creativity at the expense of everything else. From “one of South Korea’s best and most worldly writers” (NPR), Diary of a Murderer is a chillingly entertaining ride.

     

    “Kim is expert at finding the humanity inside the other, the comedy inside the tragedy, and the twisted within the seemingly normal.” —CrimeReads
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateApr 16, 2019
    ISBN9781328545565
    Author

    Young-ha Kim

    YOUNG-HA KIM is the author of seven novels—four published in the United States, including the acclaimed I Have the Right to Destroy Myself and the award-winning Black Flower—and five short-story collections. He has won every major Korean literature award, and his works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Seoul, South Korea. 

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    Reviews for Diary of a Murderer

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    • 4/5
      This is a book of Korean short stories. Maybe you could call them crime stories, but I think they are a great deal more than that, and certainly transcend the crime fiction genre.My favorite is the title story, in which we are in the mind of an elderly serial killer who is now suffering from dementia. He tells us that he last murdered someone 25 years ago, and that "I killed people for 30 years straight. I was very diligent back then. Now that the statute of limitations has passed, I could even go blab about what I'd done. If this were America, I could probably publish a memoir." Now he has trouble remembering things, and trouble processing the meaning of situations in which he finds himself, but he thinks that his beloved daughter is missing and in danger, and he suspects that a man who keeps coming around and says he is a police officer may have something to do with this. The ultimate unreliable narrator.I also liked most of the other stories. In "The Origin of Life" two childhood friends reconnect and become lovers. When the man learns that the woman's husband is abusing her, he believes that the husband must be disposed of. In "Missing Child", a three year old is kidnapped, and his parents lives go off the rails. The mother becomes schizophrenic, the father keeps losing his job. Then, eleven years later, the child is recovered, a sullen teenager who only wants to stay where he was, with his kidnapper, who he believed was his mother. The only story I didn't care for was "The Writer" in which aman with writer's block goes to New York City to finish his book.The book is written largely in a literary and somewhat experimental style, and the author has won crime awards. Many of the stories involve elements of mental illness, and are often dream-like and surreal. Even so, I liked them.3 1/2 stars

    Book preview

    Diary of a Murderer - Young-ha Kim

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