The Hole

Translated by Sora Kim-Russell

WINNER OF THE SHIRLEY JACKSON AWARD

A prizewinning psychological horror from Korea - after a devastating car crash, a man wakes to find himself paralysed and under the control of his vengeful mother-in-law.

'A Korean take on Misery' Time
'A masterwork of suspense, and a profound meditation on grief, solitude, and secrecy' Laura van den Berg, author of Find Me

Oghi wakes in a hospital bed unable to speak or move. The car accident that killed his wife has left him trapped in his own body and under the control of his mother-in-law, as she grieves the loss of her only child.

Isolated from his friends and neglected by his nurse, Oghi's world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his wife, a sensitive woman who found solace in cultivating her garden.

But as Oghi remains alone and paralysed, his mother-in-law is hard at work in the now-abandoned garden, uprooting what her daughter had worked so hard to plant and obsessively digging larger and larger holes...

A bestseller in Korea, The Hole is a superbly crafted and deeply unnerving novel about the horrors of isolation and neglect in all of its banal and brutal forms.

'Like Hitchcock or Abe, Pyun peers head on into the unnerving depths of human grief' Blake Butler, author of 300,000,000

'While reading The Hole, you'll find yourself suddenly doubting everything' Kyung-sook Shin, New York Times bestselling author of Please Look After Mother