✪ “Book of the Year” by YES24 and Aladin
✪ 310,000 copies sold in Korea

“Jeong's keen ear for dialect and dialogue encapsulates in this thin volume the whole of the life of a passionate man and the impact of his decisions on his country, his family, and history itself.” -- Anton Hur, translator and author

“Father died. Slammed his head into a telephone pole. A very serious man had seriously come to the end of a seriously lived life by seriously slamming his head against a telephone pole. [...] Goddamn it.”

Following her father’s sudden death, Ari Ko returns to her hometown to host a three-day funeral.

Ari was once close to her father, but as she grew older, she found it increasingly difficult to understand him. Her father, a former communist partisan who fought in the Korean War, lived by the principle of "Serve the People," a belief that only brought troubles to their doorstep.

However, as friends and comrades recounts her father’s life during the funeral—his glorious days as a partisan, his fake treachery to protect his people, his tangled relationship with his family—Ari realizes that there are a lot about her father she didn’t know.

Ten years in the making, this semi-autobiographical novel has sold over 310,000 copies and received praise from the former Korean president, Moon. Jeong Ji-A, in honor of her partisan parents, brings to light Korea's overlooked history and the unsung partisan fighters.