Kyung-Ran Jo – författare

'If you wanted to end your life instantly, perfectly, you needed practice and preparation.'A sculptor and architect cross paths once in Seoul, and they meet again in Tokyo. The sculptor has decided she is going to die. She is learning to prepare a fatal serving of blowfish. This was how her grandmother killed herself, in front of her husband and child. Delicate, artful but with a sense of guaranteed finality.The architect's life has been marred by death. His elder brother leapt to his death from the fifth floor of an apartment building. He too is pondering his own exit from this life. For the woman, the man is a pitstop on the road to her own suicide. For the man, the woman is a way to forestall his death and offer him an exit. Through the impressions they leave on each other, they reflect on their own lives. Taking readers through various urban spaces of Seoul and Tokyo, Blowfish delves into the inner lives of two people contemplating their failures in love and art. What truly makes life worth living?

'A book to chew on and savour, a deft delve into the intricacies of love and art'Chicago Review of Books'The narrative scatters the quiet beauty of human connection like constellations'Kyung-sook Shin, author Please Look After Mom and Violets'[A] strange, dark, lovely novel' Lit Hub____________________'If you wanted to end your life instantly, perfectly, you needed practice and preparation.'A sculptor and architect cross paths once in Seoul, and they meet again in Tokyo. The sculptor has decided she is going to die. She is learning to prepare a fatal serving of blowfish. This was how her grandmother killed herself, in front of her husband and child. Delicate, artful but with a sense of guaranteed finality.The architect's life has been marred by death. His elder brother leapt to his death from the fifth floor of an apartment building. He too is pondering his own exit from this life. For the woman, the man is a pitstop on the road to her own suicide. For the man, the woman is a way to forestall his death and offer him an exit. Through the impressions they leave on each other, they reflect on their own lives. Taking readers through various urban spaces of Seoul and Tokyo, Blowfish delves into the inner lives of two people contemplating their failures in love and art. What truly makes life worth living?

Blowfish is a postmodern novel in four parts, alternating between the respective stories of a female sculptor and a male architect. Death is the motif connecting these parallel lives. The sculptor’s grandmother killed herself by eating poisonous blowfish in front of her husband and child, while the architect’s elder brother leapt to his death from the fifth floor of an apartment building. Now, both protagonists are contemplating their own suicides. The sculptor and architect cross paths once in Seoul, and meet again in Tokyo, while the sculptor is learning to prepare a fatal serving of blowfish.The narrative loosely approximates a love story, but this is no romance in the normal sense. For the woman, the man is a pitstop on the road to her own suicide. For the man, the woman forestalls death and offers him a final chance. Through the conflicting impressions they have of one another, the characters look back on their lives; it is only the desire to create art that calls them back from death.Evoking the heterogeneous urban spaces of Seoul and Tokyo, Blowfish delves into the inner life of a woman contemplating her failures in love and art. Jo’s fierce will to write animates the novel; the lethal taste of blowfish, which one cannot help but eat even though one may die in doing so, approximates the inexorable pains of writing a novel.