prolog
Chapter 1: They Come
Chapter 2 Secretly, Quickly
Chapter 3: High-altitude Hwayang
Chapter 4: The Time When Everything Is Destroyed 1
Chapter 5: The Time When Everything Is Destroyed 2
Chapter 6 Southern Blockade
Epilogue

Commentary on the work: Meeting 'Myself' in a dystopian disaster by Jeong Yeo-ul
Author's Note

2009 World Literature Award Winner "Shoot My Heart"
Jeong Yu-jeong, author of the 2011 bestseller "Seven Years of Night," releases a new novel after two years and three months.
The most anticipated Korean literature of 2013, chosen by readers and the press!

“Hidden in the cruel reality
“A symbol of salvation and a burning desire for survival”

The new novel 《28》 (published by Eunhaengnamu) by Jeong Yu-jeong, author of the 1st World Youth Literature Award winner 《Spring Camp of My Life》, the 5th World Literature Award winner 《Shoot My Heart》, and the best-selling novel 《Seven Years of Night》, has been published.
This novel is a story about the longing for survival and passionate salvation of humans and all living things, unfolding over 28 days in the city of Hwayang, which means "sunshine."


Based on a realistic worldview and character settings, the author vividly portrays a city of destroyed humans that has been turned into a bottomless pit in an instant before the readers' eyes.
Six interlocking narrative gears, each with its own perspective from five characters and a dog, grip the reader's heart and rush into a realistic story.
The sentences, pushed forward with extremely short sentences, completely excluding conjunctions, vividly show the vibrant, living, breathing descriptions and explosive power of the story, and the image of a human being who never gives up hope even in despair and anger leaves a deep impression.
This novel is about everything that wants to survive.


"I want to bring readers into the world I created."

The author, who was praised for “opening up a new horizon of novels that had never existed in the Korean literary world” through his previous work “Seven Years of Night,” has returned to readers after two years and three months with a compelling narrative.
Compared to previous works, the scale is much larger, and the author's depiction of the terrible epidemic that spreads across the city and the protagonists trying to survive in the locked-down city is more detailed and solid.
By interviewing experts from the veterinary and emergency medicine departments of university hospitals, the quarantine department of the city hall, investigators, special forces, and the 119 rescue team, the reality was enhanced with sophistication, and the author's bold imagination, which is both his specialty and optimistic, completed a human drama that is on a different level from a simple disaster thriller.
This novel is the result of the author's ambitious will to "take readers into the world I created," and not to make it seem empty, even though it is a fictional world.
Here, the story of a musher racing through the endless snowy plains of Alaska on a dog sled adds to the fantasy of a snowy country that is both beautiful and cruel to humans.


The strengths that were shown in previous works and received much love from readers also shine in this work.
The power to draw in readers by building a solid story and using black humor that was so prominent in "Shoot My Heart" remains intact, and the power to drive the world and characters in the novel into the abyss of ruin and advance the narrative in a heated manner, which was further developed in the next work, "Seven Years of Night," is surprisingly solid.
In addition, in this work, the author attempted a third-person multiple perspective to show from various angles the human population facing a disaster that could not have been anticipated or prepared for.
This allows for a dense transition between the perspectives of five characters and one dog without creating excessive gaps or overlapping in the story, and allows for the depiction of the city of Hwayang, which is hit by a 28-day snowstorm.
Armed with a dense and overwhelming narrative and sentences that run without pause, the story confronts the reader head-on.


Asking fundamental questions about the moral basis of life, salvation, and hope!

The author's unique sense of problem, which focuses on human nature, has become sharper like a newly sharpened sword.
It looks into the abyss of humanity with a gaze that does not carelessly pity, and asks fundamental questions about the fear and madness of humans facing death, as well as the moral basis of life.
Instead of repeating the familiar formula of disaster novels, the author brings to light moral questions that we have pushed aside in our subconscious.
Is your life more precious than a typist's or an animal's?
Can you live without guilt for the life you gained at the sacrifice of another life?


Literary critic Jeong Yeo-ul commented that author Jeong Yu-jeong is "getting closer to the more fundamental theme of exploring human nature in disaster" in this work with "a much harsher and merciless reality" than in her previous works, and that "the narrative of a great disaster that blossomed from the tip of her brush is read as a passionate allegory toward our reality right here and now, rather than a virtual simulation."
This novel is more realistic than reality, yet it is even more powerful because it is a metaphor for the world we live in.
Moreover, the charm that fiction offers is never missed.
This is why we love Jeong Yu-jeong's novels.