1 9
2 67
3 87
Work Commentary 124
Author's Note 138

Women of various generations themselves,
Confess your life in your own language!

Lee Seo-su, who debuted in the Dong-A Ilbo in 2014 but continued her lonely literary career for quite some time, finally won the Hwangsanbeol Youth Literature Award for her first full-length novel, Your 4 Minutes and 33 Seconds, in 2020, receiving rave reviews that said, "It is enough to become an important asset for Korean literature that will take Korean literature to the next level."
Afterwards, he won the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award for his short story “The Age of Mijo,” which offered profound comfort to young people of his time struggling with the pain of survival, and he firmly established his own unique world of depth in the minds of readers.
And in her second full-length novel, "Help Me Sister," published subsequently, she received rave reviews both inside and outside the literary world for her calm portrayal of the solidarity of family members in the harsh realities of Korean society.
Hyundae Munhak is publishing the new work, “Body and Women,” by Lee Seo-su, who has suddenly emerged as a leading figure in the next generation of Korean literature.


This novel, which consists of three parts, depicts the protagonist's past from his school days to his work and married life in Part 1.
It contains my school days when my small body was the biggest complex in my life, my college days when I was subjected to dating violence by my first date, and my married life when I chose divorce due to unresolved issues with my husband.
In Part 2 of the story of Mother 'Mibok', the difficult past of the mother is introduced, in which she was molested by her school teacher due to her unusual growth, and was chased to the city without receiving any further education because she was a woman, leading a life at the bottom.


Part 3, which returns to the present, depicts the story of me, my older sister Soyeon, and my older sister Youngseok, who live in the same era and culture but have different thoughts and standards about the body.
If the first and second parts of the novel raised questions about female identity centered around my mother's and my 'body', then the third part can be said to be the answer to those questions.
This novel explores the lives of women, a subject the author has long explored, and questions how women themselves experience and internalize the attribute of "female body," while also portraying the self-understanding of contemporary women's bodies.


“And yet, they confess their lives in their own language.
In this novel, the confessional form is not only a feature of the writing style, but is also related to the character's activeness that compels him to speak in this way.
'Confession' is about women having a language that can explain the social context that contributed to their identity.
“The two female speakers may have experienced something in the past but were unable to ‘explain’ the feelings or meaning of the situation at the time, but later, when they looked back on it, they were able to articulate the meaning of their experience.”
-Seonwoo Eunsil

Author's Note

I complete a novel with the belief that there is someone's voice that needs to be heard.
This novel also started from that belief.
That voice had been buried inside me for a long time, amplified as I grew up, and I could well have predicted that it would break out someday.
Beauvoir said:
Sexuality is not a personal issue, it is a political issue.
The starting point of this novel was to depict the diverse sexualities of women.
I am still writing the story that continues.
Before, I couldn't tell which direction to go, but now I can vaguely see the outline.
As if dawn is slowly breaking.
If you encounter change in a new place, you will welcome it.

The forty-fourth volume of "Pin Novels," published by the monthly magazine "Modern Literature"!

The "Modern Literature Pin Series" is a project that selects the most modern and cutting-edge writers of contemporary Korean literature, presents them in the monthly magazine "Modern Literature," and then publishes them in book form.
The single volumes presented here are individual works, but are also curated by six authors as a 'series'.
Modern literature hopes that the seriousness of this series will be ironically combined with the delicate lightness of the word 'pin'.

The "Modern Literature Pin Series Novel Selection" is published by the monthly magazine "Modern Literature" on the 25th of every other month, and is designed to allow readers to encounter new works by Korea's top writers on a set date.
This is a kind of 'salary book' concept that is being introduced for the first time in Korean publishing history.


Modern Literature × Artist Lee Yeon-mi

The "Modern Literature Pin Series" has become an original novel collection, an art anthology, reconstructed as a special work of art with a cover work imbued with the artist's soul.
The reason each novel possesses its own unique fragrance and profound artistic fascination is probably because of the spiritual harmony created by the meeting of the two worlds of novels and art.

Lee Yeon-mi
He graduated from the Department of Painting at Kookmin University's College of Fine Arts and the Department of Painting at the same university's graduate school.
Starting with a solo exhibition at the Tokyo Gallery, he has participated in solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, including at Gallery Hyundai, the Seoul Museum of Art, and the Shanghai Art Museum.
He is actively building his own garden, maximizing the gap between reality and fantasy, and creating a lyrical world of sculptures intertwined with rough-hewn trees and mysterious and unfamiliar flora and fauna.