Violets

About the Book: Violets

It is the 1970s in rural South Korea and San is alone.

She finally 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.

It is the 1990s and San is twenty-two, when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seouls bustling city centre. Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San meets 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, Sans 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 womans desperate search for both autonomy and attachment in an unforgiving society.