Everything Belongs to Us: A Novel

Everything Belongs to Us: A Novel

Two young women of vastly different means each struggle to find her own way during the darkest hours of South Koreaâ€™s â€œeconomic miracleâ€ in a striking debut novel for readers of Anthony Marra and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie.

Seoul, 1978. At South Koreaâ€™s top university, the nationâ€™s best and brightest compete to join the professional elite of an authoritarian regime. Success could lead to a life of rarefied privilege and wealth; failure means being left irrevocably behind.

For childhood friends Jisun and Namin, the stakes couldnâ€™t be more different. Jisun, the daughter of a powerful business mogul, grew up on a mountainside estate with lush gardens and a dedicated chauffeur. Naminâ€™s parents run a tented food cart from dawn to curfew; her sister works in a shoe factory. Now Jisun wants as little to do with her fatherâ€™s world as possible, abandoning her schoolwork in favor of the underground activist movement, while Namin studies tirelessly in the service of one goal: to launch herself and her family out of poverty.

But everything changes when Jisun and Namin meet an ambitious, charming student named Sunam, whose need to please his family has led him to a prestigious club: the Circle. Under the influence of his mentor, Juno, a manipulative social climber, Sunam becomes entangled with both women, as they all make choices that will change their lives forever.

In this sweeping yet intimate debut, Yoojin Grace Wuertz details four intertwining lives that are rife with turmoil and desire, private anxieties and public betrayals, dashed hopes and broken dreamsâ€”while a nation moves toward prosperity at any cost.

Praise for Everything Belongs to Us

â€œThe intertwined lives of South Korean university students provide intimacy to a rich and descriptive portrait of the country during the period of authoritarian industrialization in the late 1970s. Wuertzâ€™s debut novel is a Gatsby-esque takedown, full of memorable characters.â€â€”The New York Times Book Review (Editorsâ€™ Choice)

â€œWuertzâ€™s masterful novel traces the paths of two friends who come from very different backgrounds, but whose trajectories have taken them to the same point in time. This is a story of love and passion, betrayal and ambition, and it is an always fascinating look at a country whose many contradictions contribute to its often enigmatic allure.â€â€”Nylon

â€œLess a debut and more an arrival, this arresting first novel from Yoojin Grace Wuertz brings to life a South Korea poised on the brink of transformation and the young people caught up in its turbulence. . . . Readers will easily draw parallels between the South Korean generation pictured here and todayâ€™s millennials, both groups of young people set to inherit sink-or-swim social orders with huge gaps in wealth. . . . Powerful and absorbing, Everything Belongs to Us introduces a new and compelling voice.â€â€”Shelf Awareness

â€œHauntingly relevant . . . hums with exquisite tensions . . . The novel reveals an exciting place and time, in the catalytic sense, and all the more-so for us as visitors who are surrounded by its echoesâ€”class, sex, raceâ€”even now.â€â€”Paste

â€œEngrossing . . . Wuertz is an important new voice in American fiction.â€â€”Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

â€œ[A] memorable debut . . . Wuertz crafts a story with delicious scenes and plot threads.â€â€”Publishers Weekly

â€œAn absorbing debut destined for major lists and nominations.â€â€”Booklist
Country USA
Manufacturer Random House
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2017-02-28
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Random House
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2017-02-28
Format	Kindle eBook

Everything Belongs to Us: A Novel

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