Flowers of Mold

Stories

By: Ha Seong-nan, Janet Hong - translator

Narrated by: Cindy Kay, David Shih

On the surface, Ha Seong-nan's stories seem pleasant enough, yet there's something disturbing just below the surface, ready to permanently disrupt the characters' lives.

A woman meets her next-door neighbor and loans her a spatula, then starts suffering horrific gaps in her memory. A man, feeling jilted by an unrequited love, becomes obsessed with sorting through his neighbors' garbage in the belief that it will teach him how to better relate to people. A landlord decides to raise the rent, and his tenants hatch a plan to kill him at a team-building retreat.

In 10 captivating, unnerving stories, Flowers of Mold presents a range of ordinary individuals - male and female, young and old - who have found themselves left behind by an increasingly urbanized and fragmented world. The latest in the trend of brilliant female Korean authors to appear in English, Ha cuts like a surgeon, and even the most mundane objects become menacing and unfamiliar under her scalpel.

©1999 Ha Seong-nan (P)2021 Tantor

Strange and haunting, in the best way

Beautiful writing, narrated admirably. Highly recommend for fans of unnerving works in the vein of Yoko Ogawa or Yukiko Motoya.