[7 Years of Night]

prolog
Lighthouse Village
Seryeongho Ⅰ
Seryeongho II
Martini's Law
Seryeongho III
The Rose of Sharon has bloomed
Epilogue
Author's Note

[7 Years of Night]

New imagination, dynamic narrative, powerful message!
The 'Amazon' of Korean Literature: World Literature Award Winners
Jeong Yu-jeong's first full-length novel in two years
"She's a monstrous 'novel Amazon'" - Park Beom-shin (novelist)

Powerful sentences that don't look back, overwhelming narrative, vivid reality
The new novel, “Seven Years of Night” (Eunhaengnamu), by Jeong Yu-jeong, the author of “Spring Camp of My Life,” winner of the 1st World Youth Literature Award, and “Shoot My Heart,” winner of the 5th World Literature Award, has been published.
This work is the result of the author's long period of writing after receiving the award. It is a novel that unfolds the sad, mysterious, and poignant story of what happened to a father and son over seven nights, powered by meticulous preliminary research and overwhelming imagination.
The charm that catches the reader's eye and captivates his mind comes from the author's intention from the beginning: to 'look into the abyss of human nature.'
Once a story begins, the author never looks back.
In a sentence or a story, once the glide begins, it continues without stopping.
Woven with the author's signature thrilling prose, solid character development, and watertight worldview, this work delivers a breathless narrative catharsis, like the pounding heart of a diver rising from the depths to the surface.


A female writer with unprecedented, powerful writing skills opens up new horizons for novels!
As demonstrated in his previous work, “Shoot My Heart,” the author is one of the novelists in Korean literature who can create the most powerful and large-scale narratives.
As a female writer, she possesses the charisma to solidly build her own novel world and lead the characters in her novels as a creator, which is quite rare.
In particular, in this work, the author meticulously crafts and completes themes and stories that are difficult to handle with ordinary writing skills, such as the destruction brought about by accidental murder, the dark side between good and evil, fact and truth, and the will to live that can never be overlooked, and presents them to the readers.


Novelist Park Beom-shin likened the author to the "Amazon" of the Korean literary world, saying, "At a time when the '90s-style novels' that relied on emotional images to express the delicate inner selves of weak modern people and had a tendency toward internalization have not yet come to an end, the literary sincerity, dynamic narrative, and broad appeal that Jeong Yu-jeong displays are more than enough to open up new horizons for novels."
Furthermore, he praised this work as a novel with “vivid reality based on meticulous research,” which signifies, above all, the solidity of the narrative.
The author's strengths lie not only in his ability to manipulate not only the characters but also the existence and fate of the world depicted in the novel, but also in his meticulousness in looking deeply into the human mind.
It would be difficult to find a work that carries the story forward so powerfully without losing such literary delicacy.


One man dreams of avenging his daughter, and another man tries to save his son's life.
This work is largely divided into two parts and takes the form of a frame novel.
The novel inside deals with the breathtaking confrontation between a man driven mad by guilt after accidentally murdering a young girl seven years ago and the victim who takes revenge on the son of the killer who killed his daughter.
The man fights to free his son from the noose of death, and in the process, he makes the worst, most irreversible choice.

The story outside begins with a son who was wandering the world with the shackles of being the 'son of a murderer', facing the death of his father who came with the news of his 'execution'.
His father's death takes the boy back to 'that night seven years ago', and he realizes that 'that night' is not over yet.
The noose was still around the boy's neck, and the hand tightening the noose was getting closer.

In the chaos of life, we sometimes forget what matters most.
The author asks earnestly:
What could we have done then, on that night seven years ago, when 'fate threw a curveball out of the blue'?
The protagonists of this novel struggle to somehow continue their lives, which are already heading towards destruction.
How will we live our lives when a momentary lapse in judgment sends us spiraling down a cliff?

Even in a situation where he has to give up everything in front of a cliff, the protagonist Hyeon-su does not give up his strong denial of his son Seo-won, the 'last remaining ball'.
If we can find the strength to overcome despair as we confront life head-on, perhaps that strength will come from our own 'last remaining ball.'
This novel is about the good will and hope that ultimately triumphs, that makes us go on with life, that makes us say “yes” to life despite everything.


A sharp gaze into the dark canyon between fact and truth
There is no room for meaningless, sloppy reminiscences in this work, nor is there any plausible, eloquent discussion of the philosophy of life.
Instead, each character's personal history and resulting pathos add plausibility and strength to the novel's vividness.
Before they know it, the reader feels swept away by the waves and rushing towards the end of the narrative along with the main characters.
I'm out of breath, but I can never put the novel down.
The oxygen tank's gauge shows a number indicating that the oxygen is low, but the reader's heart is filled with anticipation that a mysterious world will unfold if they go deeper.


The night fate threw a curveball out of the blue,
If you were me, how would you deal with this cursed life?
Twelve-year-old Seo-won, who survived the so-called Seryeongho disaster, is labeled by the world as the 'son of a murderer'.
After moving from relative to relative, Seo-won is eventually abandoned by everyone and meets Seung-hwan, with whom she had lived in the same house in Seryeong Village, and they begin to live together.
Seo-won, who was trying to start a new life by relying on Seung-hwan, a novelist and his father's subordinate, is hit with the news of his father's confirmed execution like a knife, and the magazine 'Sunday Magazine', which branded Seo-won as the 'son of a murderer', drives him out of the world.
Seo-won lives a wandering life with Seung-hwan, avoiding people's eyes, and learns how to dive from Seung-hwan.

Seven years after the Seryeongho disaster, Seung-hwan and Seo-won, who had been living quietly in the lighthouse village, rescue young men who had suffered an accident while scuba diving at night.
Seo-won, who has been brought back to public attention by this incident, receives a box from an unknown sender.
The novel inside the box was written by Seung-hwan and details the disaster on the Seryeongho seven years ago.
Seung-Hwan's novel "Seryeongho" begins with the events of that night in Seryeong Village surrounding a girl who was strangled to death by someone after being involved in a traffic accident.
The main characters of the novel are Choi Hyun-soo, Seo-won's father and a failed professional baseball player; Kang Eun-joo, Choi Hyun-soo's wife who desperately dreams of being middle-class; Ahn Seung-hwan, who attempts to dive to explore a village submerged in Lake Seryeong in search of the muse of his novel; Oh Young-je, who appears to be an elite but is a ruthless dentist who does not hesitate to assault his wife and daughter; Oh Se-ryeong, Oh Young-je's daughter and the unfortunate girl who disappeared into the lake after being killed; and Choi Seo-won, Choi Hyun-soo's son who was a bold and fearless twelve-year-old boy.

Seowon: “My uncle says I should live like that too.
I counter by saying, “Take the word ‘that’ out of that sentence.”
Hyunsoo: “There’s something I’ve been determined to do since I was little.
“I won’t treat my child like my father.”
Seunghwan “Cats have to scratch something, dogs have to bite something, and I have to write something.”
Eun-ju: “I’ll just ask you one thing.
“Did you come here that day, the day I told you to come and look at the house? Or not?”
Serin: “Don’t look.
“Sir, don’t look… … .”
Youngjae: “That doesn’t mean you killed him.
“It should be called ‘permanent correction.’”

Seo-won, who is fed up with reliving the events of seven years ago, abandons the novel she was reading and leaves home, only to receive a telegram informing her that her father has been executed.
Seowon tries to dive into the sea to put out the fire that is raging in his stomach.
After being on the brink of death and surfacing, Seo-won sees a stranger looking at her from afar, and only then does she realize that she still doesn't fully understand why her father went to the gallows.
And then I open Seunghwan's novel and start reading it...
Between truth and fact, what is the truth behind the Seryeongho disaster?