Winner of the Munhakdongne University Novel Award and the Shin Dong-yup Literary Award
Im Sol-a's first novel collection

From eighteen to twenty-five years old
A story that is very close to you, starting from your own experience.

The first novel collection, 『Snow, People, and Snowman』, by author Im Sol-a, who faces life head-on and experiences it with her whole body, has been published.
He began his literary career in 2013 when his poetry was selected for the Joongang New Writer's Award. He proved his talent as a novelist by winning the Munhakdongne University Novel Award in 2015 with his first full-length novel, "The Best Life." He also won the Shin Dong-yup Literary Award in 2017 with his first poetry collection, "Strange Weather and Good People." He is a young writer who has shown remarkable achievements in both poetry and novels.
This is the first opportunity to savor the world of Im Sol-a's works, which add depth to Korean literature by encapsulating profound thoughts within poetic sentences, through a collection of short stories.
The words that Im Sol-a has carefully selected and arranged carry the same weight as poetry, quietly filling the spaces between sentences with unspoken meanings and emitting their own unique resonance.

The eight stories in the collection are arranged in order of the characters' ages.
As the story progresses to the next work, the changes shown in the characters of Im Sol-ah as she ages are impressive.
The beings who were scattered like grains of sand, rebelling against a world that makes them feel abnormal, come together at the end of the novel and turn into snowflakes filled with moisture.
As Im Sol-ah stated in her “Author’s Note,” “These characters are comrades who have gone through the same things I have gone through so far,” the changes that the characters in the novel undergo as they continue their lives seem to be related to the changes that the author Im Sol-ah has gone through.
Im Sol-ah immerses herself in the blind spots of society that are very close by but cannot be noticed unless you pay attention.
Thus, the author places details of life as a weak and minority that cannot be written about without experiencing it himself into the novel.
Because it is written this way, while reading Im Sol-ah's novel, we vividly remember some of the rudeness and injustice that we have encountered at least once in our daily lives.

“It’s not your fault.
“You have to get rid of that idea first.”
I blinked.
The meaning of the word 'wrong' seemed to slip away and fall to the bottom like a squishy fish.
Father said he would help, and that he would swear, and asked Young-hoo if he would swear too.
Since my father kept nodding, I nodded absentmindedly too.
Only when my father let go of my body and closed the open window did the meanings that had been slipping away begin to flutter on the floor.
It was only then that I realized that I had never thought of myself as having done anything wrong.

--- From "I Have Something to Give You"

When I had the key, the author who arrived home first had to stand in front of the door and wait for me.
When the author had the key, the author arrived first, opened the door, went in, and locked the room.
I made a promise to myself that I would make a copy of the key every time the author wouldn't open the door.
If you copy the key, you won't have to wait for each other even if you fight.
Each person could enter the room at any time they wanted and leave the room at any time they wanted.
That's exactly why we didn't copy the key.

--- From "Let's Do It Again"

Since the incident with Instructor B, Jeongwon has developed a habit of mulling over the term 'poetic license'.
Until the day before, it was a word that Jeongwon liked.
Because poetry allowed me to remember all the memories that broke my heart.
But now the term 'poetic license' felt violent.
Those words seemed to cover up some injustice with poetic privilege.
Those who enjoyed this privilege often described it as 'Dionysian', but their Dionysian side had a characteristic of erupting strongly only in front of others, especially the weak.

--- From "Admiration"

My sister was the only one who didn't reject me even though she thought I was abnormal.
I know you need me to keep up the illusion that you're normal.
I also know that the aspects of me that don't seem normal fulfill my sister's desire to be normal.
Of course, I know that my sister's affection is well-intentioned.
But I'm not grateful.
Because we've been disguising ourselves for so long that it's become normal to not even know what we're disguising, and we're all festering together equally.
Why am I saying this to my sister?
I wonder if my sister will understand that I am saying this out of good intentions.

--- From "The Very Ordinary Speech of an Obvious World"

How much should we price a body that is unusable?
We estimated the price of a second toe with one joint amputated and the price of a toe with a healthy joint attached.
If my sister's toe had been in the bottle, would she have gone to retrieve it?
He probably just left it behind.
If the heart of the galaxy was in the bottle, would my sister have gone to get it back?
That would probably be the case.
If my sister's heart was in the bottle, would Eunha have gone to get it back?
Four million won was a huge sum of money that Eunha could earn by working part-time for eight hours a day for three months.
It was an amount of money that Eunha had never held in her hands before.
Still, Eunha would not have given up on her sister's heart.
What would Eunha have done if her sister's toe had been in the glass bottle?
The answer didn't come right away.
How are the heart and the toes different?

--- From "Body Excavations"

I remembered the self-introductions that were filled with lies.
If you say that nothing is nothing, it cannot become nothing.
My struggle back then was that being nothing was considered worthless, but I couldn't write about that struggle in any self-introduction.
They created false suffering, false enlightenment, and false passion.
It was no different when meeting people.
People liked my fake pain.
But to some people, my lie was seen through.
Every time I had to meet them again, I looked around.
Every time I opened my mouth, they looked at me with a strange look.
Those eyes were telling me I was fake.
No one was happy to hear that I had never actually been that sick.
I was falsely sick, but I wanted to escape from that pain.

--- From "Sunshine Chalet"

The people who will probably be most pleased when we write this story in its most explicit form and put it out into the world are the perpetrators.
The perpetrators will use our writing to trample on the courage of the victims who have come forward against them.
Few people would tolerate the fact that victims can sometimes emotionally blame others.
Very few people understood that we could not try to explain ourselves.
We decided not to make any explanation.
He was additionally accused of being silent.

--- From "Snow, People, and Snowmen"