Folklorn - by Angela Mi Young Hur (Paperback)

About the Book

A Korean-American scientist who has always been haunted by a ghostly imaginary friend, and whose mother warned that the women of their family were subject to a cyclical intergenerational curse, seeks answers in her mother's folk tales and a family history riddled with war and loss, as the fate of her ancestors closes in on her. Now in trade paperback.

Book Synopsis

"Ghost story, family saga, parable, feminist reimagined myth: Angela Mi Young Hur's hugely ambitious Folklorn is a spellbinding shape-shifter of a novel that tackles questions of race, culture, and history head-on, exploring the blurry boundaries between past and present, fact and fantasy, and personal and cultural--or cosmic." --Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere

A New York Times Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novel of 2021 An NPR Best Book of 2021 Indie Next Pick May 2021

A genre-defying, continents-spanning saga of Korean myth, scientific discovery, and the abiding love that binds even the most broken of families.

Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she's put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she's run from all her life. But it isn't long before her childhood imaginary friend--an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow--comes to claim her at last.

Years ago, Elsa's now-catatonic mother warned her that women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But Elsa also faces a more earthly fate: the mental illness and generational trauma that run in her immigrant family.

When her mother breaks her decade-long silence and tragedy strikes, Elsa must return to her childhood home in California. There, among family wrestling with their own demons, she unravels the secrets hidden in the handwritten pages of her mother's dark stories: of women's desire and fury; of magic suppressed, stolen, or punished; of the hunger for vengeance.

Folklorn is a wondrous and necessary exploration of the myths we inherit and those we fashion for ourselves.

Review Quotes

"An elegant punch to the face . . . beautiful and hard and hungry, full of sharp, painful observations, slicing clichés open like prickly pears and devouring their hearts." --Amal el-Mohtar in the New York Times Book Review

"Folklorn is extremely ambitious in scope, and the writing never fails to deliver. . . . Angela Mi Young Hur engagingly blends Korean folktales with literary traditions for a fresh take on both the universal story of identity and assimilation, and the national tale of han." --Washington Independent Review of Books

"A gorgeous journey into the intersection of science and myth and how our past traumas shape us--but how they need not define us." --NPR "Best Books of 2021"

"Haunting and spiritual and touching, and so unique. This is absolutely one to be cherished." --Tor.com, "30 Most Anticipated Books of 2021"

"A complex meditation on intergenerational trauma. . . . This thought-provoking work will appeal to SFF fans who like their talk of particle physics side by side with fox spirits and fairy tales." --Publishers Weekly

"Genre-defying and emotionally unsettling, it is a book that refuses to stay in whatever category the reader wants to put it. . . . Well worth the effort." --Locus

"Angela Mi Young Hur's hugely ambitious Folklorn is a spellbinding shape-shifter of a novel that tackles questions of race, culture, and history head-on, exploring the blurry boundaries between past and present, fact and fantasy, and personal and cultural--or cosmic." --Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere

"Vivid and delectable. Angela Mi Young Hur is equally at home working in the fertile territories of myth and the fantastic as in the nuanced portrayal of a contemporary, complex family. I loved this." - Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

"Dark, difficult, and riveting--Folklorn gave me endless trouble, and I appreciate it." --R. F. Kuang, author of The Poppy War

"In Folklorn, Angela Mi Young Hur weaves the fantastic into the realism of a compelling family saga, creating a heartfelt novel as original as it is irresistible." --Mat Johnson, author Loving Day

"Hur writes with virtuosity and power, weaving together the ribbons of the mythic with the complex tapestry of family and history to create a gorgeous, moving whole." --Kat Howard, author of An Unkindness of Magicians

"Folklorn is a work of capacious, original imagination: part supernatural mystery, part immigrant family story. Hur's mixing and melding of genres is an inventive, elegant means of illuminating the dualities of diasporic experience, as well as a testament to the essential role of stories in understanding our identities." --Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl

"This novel is brash, defiant and ultimately full of yearning." --Chia-Chia Lin, author of The Unpassing

About the Author

Angela Mi Young Hur received a B.A. in English from Harvard and an MFA in Creative Writing from Notre Dame, where she won the Sparks Fellowship and the Sparks Prize, a post-graduate fellowship. Her debut The Queens of K-Town was published by MacAdam/Cage in 2007. Folklorn was chosen by Kelly Link for a Tin House novel mentorship through the Tin House Summer Workshop, where Hur also studied with Alexander Chee and Mat Johnson, and later with Peter Ho Davies at the Napa Valley Writers Conference.