A place where sweet breezes and breathtaking typhoons coexist.
This is a new territory that Hwang Jeong-eun has acquired in Korean literature.
And he enters readers' hearts with surprising gentleness and firmness through his new novel, "Let's Keep Going," which further confirms this diagnosis.
Hwang Jeong-eun's unique, neat and rhythmic sentences resonate like poetry, and the love endured by the wounded protagonists is clumsy but poignant.
One of his most beautiful novels will surely find its place on readers' shelves.


If you are not reading Hwang Jeong-eun now
We are missing out on a world of sad beauty.

"I'll Keep Going" is a work that was serialized in the quarterly magazine "Creation and Criticism" under the title "Sorananananagi" from the fall 2012 to summer 2013 issues.
After pouring my heart and soul into revising the work for over a year after the serialization ended, the emotional lines of the main characters Sora, Nana, and Nagi became deeper and clearer, and the work became more intense to the point where you could feel the breathing of the three characters even between the lines.
In her previous two short story collections, Hwang Jeong-eun demonstrated her unique imagination and her outstanding ability to express it through language. In her first full-length novel, 『The Shadow of a White Dress』, which won the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, she fully displayed her underlying lyricism.
"I'll Keep Going" continues the lyricism, but the magic of Hwang Jeong-eun's lyricism, which flows gently and then explodes, has become even more powerful.

In "Let's Continue," where the voices of Sora, Nana, and Nagi each form a chapter and progress sequentially, you can feel the different emotional statements of the three people existing in the same time and space, each with its own temperature.
The novel's device of seeing the inner thoughts of Sora and Nana, who are in conflict with each other, and remembering their shared past differently provides readers with new enjoyment.
One cannot help but admire the author's concentration in filling every little action of the characters and every line of dialogue with such emotion, and in completing the story without letting up the tension until the very end.
Once again, Hwang Jeong-eun is at a point where we can see the novel's self-renewal.
Literary critic Shin Hyeong-cheol recently said, “Hwang Jeong-eun’s novels are a bit scary now” (Young Writer’s Award judges’ comments).
And this feeling of awe, bordering on wonder, is not something only felt by others.
Stories of people counting his name on one hand and waiting for his next work are often heard in literary circles.
How far will his novel go, and where will the layers of his concise and beautiful sentences lead us?


Love that seeped in without a trace
Even if you hate love, love never stops coming to you.

Aeja, just like her name suggests, was a person full of love, overflowing with love, and nothing but love.
Aeja, who had only loved him, lost that love and became a strange thing with only a shell left. (Page 88)

It's better if there are no children.
Aeja is pitiful.
It's so pitiful that it's lovable, but I'd rather it not be there.
I like a world without it.
I am Sora after all.
I plan to end my life as a skywalker.
It's extinct.
A tribe called Sora. (Page 45)

When it comes to love, I think that level of emotion is appropriate.
No matter what happens, it will eventually get better.
Even if we break up, even if we are betrayed, even if one of us suddenly disappears, it will eventually be okay to say, "It's okay."
That's good enough. (Page 104)

When her beloved husband dies in an accident at a work site, Sora and Nana grow up with deep skepticism about relationships, love, and motherhood, under the care of their mother, Aeja, who brainwashes them into believing that the essence of life is futile, saying, “Every time she stops doing all the activities necessary for living, she ruins herself, ruins Sora, and ruins Nana” (page 99).
Sora, who dreams of becoming extinct without leaving anything behind in the world, and Nana, who is wary of a love that is full of all its heart and has incredible destructive power.
An incident occurs in that cold but orderly world that throws everything into disarray.

I feel precarious and anxious, as if the world could end at any moment and that moment would be devastating for everyone.
Maybe it's because I've come to value it more.
Perhaps because of all that, Nana has become weaker than before. (Page 226)

This precious feeling is exactly the feeling Nana has for the child in her womb.
The person who was most shocked by Nana's pregnancy was Sora.
For those who grew up in the world of Aeja, the ruins of love, becoming pregnant or becoming parents is nothing but a fear.
But love seeps in from somewhere without a trace, and no matter how hard you try to push it away, it somehow manages to carve out a place for itself in a corner of your heart.
Nana, who seemed to not care if the world were to end at any moment, worries about whether the world is a place fit for a baby to live in, and chooses her food carefully.
Sora grumbles that there's someone annoying her these days.
Will Sora and Nana be able to blossom from the desolate ruins they have been unable to escape their entire lives?

“Humans are fleeting and insignificant.
But I think that's what makes it lovely.”

On the other hand, Nagi says, “Just because you can’t imagine it, don’t make it out to be something that doesn’t exist in the world” (page 187).
This line is a will to protect one's love that no one blesses, and it is also a determination to firmly connect Sora, Nana, and the world around them.
The environment they grew up in, their worldview, and even their beliefs or distrust in relationships.
Hwang Jeong-eun must have wanted to tell this story through the love of these three people, which is so beautiful and poignant.
Just because you haven't seen it before, because it's unusual, because it's foreign, doesn't mean it doesn't exist in the world.
Every being is trying to live in their own place and do their own share, and every single little movement can be everything to them.


Life is cut short and trivial, and after death, that's all there is to a person's life, she says, and Nana largely agrees.
Humans are fleeting and insignificant.
But that's why I think Nana is lovely.
Because I'm somehow surviving with that insignificance.
Because I am holding on, whether I am happy or sad.

On the other hand, I think.
Is meaninglessness a bad thing?

Sora, Nana, Nagi's older brother, Aunt Sunja, the baby, and even Aeja, all of them may seem meaningless from the world's perspective.
They may be so fleeting that they are almost meaningless.
So, is it not precious? If you think about it, that's not true at all. (Page 227)

Just because something is meaningless doesn't mean it's not precious, Nana says.
Even though it is meaningless, fleeting, and insignificant, we are all barely surviving.
Nevertheless, each and every life we ​​live is precious.
The last sentence, “I will continue,” which is a recurring sentence like the title of this novel that flows out of Nana’s mouth, must have been said slowly, chewing on it, with a soft but firm determination.
Nevertheless, I will try to live well and love.

Everyone is asleep.
I hear their movements in the darkness.
It won't be long before daylight dawns.

Let's continue. (Page 228)

*What makes “Let’s Keep Going” even more special is that the audiobook service is provided free of charge for six months after publication.
This is the first 'The Book Special Edition' to be published simultaneously in paperback and audiobook formats.
'The Book', a paper book with digital capabilities, is a groundbreaking service that allows users to listen to the book's content as an audiobook or use various digital content by holding their smartphone over the NFC tag attached to the book.
"The Book," which preserves the essence of the paper book while presenting it in a new way for the digital age, will breathe new life into the stagnant reading culture, provide the joy of reading to the visually impaired who have had limited access to quality literature, and be useful in fields requiring language education and multicultural families.
"Let's Keep Going", narrated by professional voice actors who sensitively capture the characters' emotions, will deliver another level of emotion.