Hunger

Perfect for fans of Crying in H Mart and The Eyes Are the Best Part, Choi Jin-young’s instant bestseller in Korea, Hunger, is a macabre romance that pushes the boundaries to see how far we would go to prove our love against all obstacles, including death.

When Dam finds her boyfriend’s dead body on the street, she carries him to her home, cleans him, and begins to eat his body. With each bite, she sifts through the bittersweet memories of her relationship with Gu, wondering how everything led to this. All she clings on to is the promise they made to each other: that should one of them die, the other would eat their body, so they can be together forever.

Hunger is the story of a most obsessive, depraved sort of love: one that you can’t help but be both disgusted and softened by. Reading this novel is a fever dream of blurring narrators, points in history, and a bizarre dichotomy between heart-melting love and disturbing violence. In a bit over a hundred pages, you travel through Dam and Gu’s childhood together, as their relationship blossoms from friends into high school sweethearts, their separation as adults, and their tragic reunion, which is soon followed by death and cannibalism.

It is not difficult to see this cannibalism as a metaphor for the meeting of souls; a love felt so strongly you become one with that person, and the very thought of losing them is enough to drive you insane from heartbreak. The actual cannibalism isn’t central to the story; more so, it reflects on the troubled lives Dam and Gu led, finding solace in one another, and the gutting pain that comes with sudden loss and grief. Hunger is a morbidly beautiful story about lost love and the desperation it can leave in its wake.