HUNGER by Choi Jin-Young

Translated by Soje

Have you ever been consumed by love? Not just obsessed. Actually consumed? So much so that you can’t imagine living without the person and would do whatever it took to have them live with you forever. Well, what if you figured out you could go literal and, um… consume your love? Such is the premise of Choi Jin-Young’s so-absurd-it’s-genius story, Hunger.

Dam finds her great love, Gu, dead on the street. We know nothing of the circumstances of his death, only that he is dead and that she has brought him home. To eat him.

After this shocking start, the story circles back to the beginning of their relationship. Through each of their perspectives we see Gu and Dam meet at school, fall in love, then out, then in again. Their lives go in weird directions, their pasts begin to haunt them. Things turn bad, but at least they have each other. Choi goes the slow boil (#sorrynotsorry), ramping up the tension, and the violence until the final act of cannibalism seems reasonable. Romantic even.

A tasty, philosophically rich and meaty antidote to the current cozy Korean lit boom.

Hunger by Choi Jin-Young (Tr. Soje)
Brazen, 2025
126 pages