Simple Heart - Softcover

Haejin, Cho

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1635425816 ISBN 13: 9781635425819

Publisher: Other Press (NY), 2026

Synopsis

In this moving exploration of dual identities reminiscent of Past Lives, a Korean writer's pregnancy raises questions about her own childhood abandonment.

Nana, a Korean playwright, was adopted as a child by a French couple. Before she was Nana, she was Esther Pak, a girl growing up in a Korean orphanage. And before she was Esther Pak, she was Munju, an infant abandoned on the railway tracks of Cheongnyangni station in Seoul.

Pregnant with the child of her ex-boyfriend, Nana receives a request from a Korean filmmaker who wishes to make a documentary about her life. Following a sudden compulsion to learn more about her own roots, she heads to Seoul as she prepares to bring a new life into the world. There, through unexpected encounters, the dark threads of her memory gradually begin to unravel.

Simple Heart delves into profound questions about identity and belonging, with a focus on family connections and motherhood that recalls Kyung-Sook Shin's Please Look After Mom. It also shines a necessary light on issues such as international adoption and the historic US military presence in Korea.

About this title

About the Author

Cho Haejin was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1976. After earning a master's degree in Korean literature, she began her writing career in 2004 with the literary magazine Munye Joongang. Since then, her work has been recognized as testament to the existence and lives of those on the margins of Korean society and those forgotten by history, and have won several prominent literary awards in Korea, including the Shin Dong-yup Literary Award, Young Writer's Award, Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award, Hyungpyeong Literary Award, and Dong-in Literary Award. Simple Heart was the winner of both the Daesan Literary Award, a leading literary award in Korea, and the Kim Man-jung Literary Award, and has been published in eight countries. Her other novels include I Met Loh Kiwan, which was adapted to film under the title My Name is Loh Kiwan and released on Netflix in 2024.

Jamie Chang is an award-winning literary translator. Her translation of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 was long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. She is the recipient of the Daesan Foundation Translation Grant and a three-time recipient of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea Grant. She lives in Ontario, Canada.

Edition details

• Publisher: Other Press (NY)
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1635425816
• ISBN 13: 9781635425819
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240