A dramatic ensemble of emotion and miracles!
Unfolding with a wondrous design of light and memory
The first full-length novel by genius architect Baek Hee-seong

★★★ Korea's first architectural faction based on a true story
★★★ Highlights of the 2024 Frankfurt Book Fair

Paris, a city where history and art live and breathe.
There, there is an eccentric artist who writes a letter to the mailbox of an old and beautiful house that arouses curiosity: “I want to hear the story inside your house.”
Baek Hee-sung, a genius architect, was the first Asian to receive the Paul Maymont Prize, awarded to young French architects.
He captivates readers with his first full-length novel, "Where the Light Leads," which took eight years to research and write.

As an architect, writer, and multi-faceted artist, he was invited to respond to the Parisian mansions and hear about the beautiful memories that permeated their homes.
The interviews I conducted while visiting various mansions became the material for this novel. This is because, while working as an architect, I found that people had 'real stories of houses' that I had never heard or learned anywhere else.
Each of those warm stories was redesigned and completed into a book.

This novel offers a surprising experience that simultaneously satisfies intellectual curiosity and warms the heart, depicting the message of love a father sought to convey to his son through the lens of architecture.
A fierce deduction unfolds to find the father's will, which was carefully hidden in the building so as not to be lost, and the journey from darkness to light ultimately shows what hope and driving force are in life.
And so, to prevent us from falling into sorrow and loss, the 'power of memory' that has sustained our lives will once again reach out to us.

I couldn't believe that there was such a cheap house on the Île de la Cité, a place every French person dreams of living in at least once in their lifetime.
The amount I proposed was 50,000 euros, or about 70 million won in Korean currency, secured through a bank loan.
I wanted a very cheap, old house.
I guess it's my pride as an architect.
I wanted to create a space that I could fix and create myself and give as a gift to myself.
There was no house in Paris that could be bought for that amount of money.
(…) The Île de la Cité is home to the Notre Dame Cathedral, beloved by all French people, as well as the Louvre Museum and the Musee d’Orsay, and it also offers a view of the beautiful Seine River, so owning a house there has been a dream for many French people.
As countless thoughts passed through our minds, we arrived in front of the house.

The reason so much light came into this huge mansion was because the building was in ruins.
The intense light and darkness were in stark contrast within it, as if they could never coexist.
(…) I looked at the ceiling and there were many large cracks and holes.
Some of those rips didn't end at the ceiling but extended into the interior walls.
It looked as if it would collapse at any moment.
And through that gap, a warm ray of light fell.
There were several slanted mirrors hanging all over the walls and ceiling.
It was a strange, indefinable place, where I felt both the fear of something collapsing and the relief of a warm ray of light.

The main entrance of Walcher Nursing Hospital was beautiful and attractive, but at the same time it looked like someone without expression.
Rather than being scary, she felt like a secretive woman who didn't want to reveal herself in any way.
But the moment I opened the door and stepped inside, I saw the grass-covered floor, almost making me think I was outside, and I had a feeling that her secret was very deep inside.
The rays of light surrounding this hospital were enough to radiate her charm.
She was an unknown 'woman' with many secrets.
In the end, I wanted to wander around and thoroughly examine this 'woman' created by the architect, France.

Why April 15th? And why you?
I had no idea what this meant.
I looked at Mrs. Chris with a bewildered expression, but she made a gesture that she didn't know.
Seeing that, I was sure she had already seen this sentence before.
If not, he would have looked at my dumbfounded expression and tried to check this sentence out of curiosity.
So, from yesterday until now, she had been acting a bit awkwardly, but it was obvious that she was trying to hide something.
And that's a story that all those old people probably know.
I had a gut feeling that this sentence was a question to test me on what had brought me here.
So what is the test for?

Architect François Walcher, upon witnessing this ruined medieval monastery, decided not to restore the ruins to their original state, but to recreate them in his own unique way.
And the ruins of the medieval monastery he recreated, and the glass and steel structure he made habitable again, felt like parents and children growing old together over time.
Although the materials are completely different, the old stone space and the glass and steel structure built by the French are perfectly combined, and to me, as a modern architect, both seem like a perfect piece of history.

“My father said strange things to me when I was young, but now I understand them a little.
“If you put something precious on the desk before the varnish dries, the desk will remember it for a lifetime.”
The moment I heard him speak, I realized once again that France and Walcher were people who knew how to put soul into things, not just look at them in terms of technology or functionality.
It was a moment of shame for me, thinking that my desk was that of an amateur.
What I felt through France was that all the things in the world that seem uncomfortable and lacking may each contain their own deep stories.

--- From the text