Employee No. 9

Kim Hye-jin is one of the most prominent voices in contemporary Korean literature whose work has been translated worldwide. She is the author of four story collections and the novels Central Station, Concerning My Daughter, Counsel Culture, and What Is Hers. Her work has received numerous awards including the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature, the Daesan Literary Award, the Kim Yujeong Literary Award, and the 4th Lee Hochul Literary Prize for Peace. Jamie Chang is a literary translator. Her translation of Cho Nam-joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. She is the recipient of the Daesan Foundation Translation Grant and a three-time recipient of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea Grant. She is based in Nova Scotia.

“Kim Hye-jin calmly and methodically describes how an ordinary, hard-working person gets pushed to the margins of society. This is what exploitation looks like today under capitalism and anyone with a job will empathize. In terms of corporate greed, we are no longer employees but expenses to be written off.”— Bora Chung, author of Cursed Bunny and Your Utopia“Employee No. 9 is unflinching in its raw depiction of the way capitalism can shrink a life down to an endless parade of small humiliations. With writing as unrelenting and controlled as the invisible company at the center of this novel, Kim shows us the horror of living in a broken world that forces us to choose the false promise of agency over our dignity. I couldn’t look away.”— Ling Ling Huang, author of Immaculate Conception and Natural Beauty“Kim Hye-jin’s deft and unsparing portrayal of late-stage capitalism in Korea takes on an almost Beckettian flair in its exploration of the decent, unremarkable man caught in the gears of the machine with seemingly no way out.”— Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody’s Daughter and The Evening Hero"Kim’s all-too-realistic third import, succinctly translated from the 2019 Korean original by National Book Award longlisted Chang, chillingly confronts another pressing contemporary issue: the dehumanizing reality of an aging workforce desperately holding on to jobs at the cost of familial obligations, health, and even basic dignity."— Booklist“Author Kim Hye-jin and translator Jamie Chang bring an extraordinary work of literature in Employee No. 9. A portrait of labor, identity, and desperation in modern corporate life, the novel explores a world shaped by inequality and the erosion of workers’ rights. Employee No. 9 captures a growing global unease surrounding labor and survival while remaining deeply rooted in the realities of contemporary Korean society.”— E. J. Koh, author of The Liberators and The Magical Language of Others“A searing critique of the workplace culture in an ultra-modern society like South Korea, where the race for higher profits trumps human dignity. Its powerful narrative reverberates long after the last page.”— Wondra Chang, author of Sonju, nominated for the National Book Award