Review of One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun

*One Hundred Shadows* by Hwang Jung-eun (2010). Published by Tilted Axis Press.

There are some books that I’ve been meaning to read for a while. I have a massive to-read list on my Goodreads, of over 2,000 books, but I know in my lifetime there are a lot of books I am never getting to. I’ve come to peace with that fact, but I’m going to try pretty hard to see what I can read in my lifetime!

Anyways, I was in a period I dubbed funemployment as I waited for a visa that was never going to arrive. I was watching and read a lot during this time, as I had nothing else to do except for my freelance work and the fact I had this blog. This blog has been one of the few reasons I’ve kept my sanity together during this time.

I received an advance copy of One Hundred Shadows from NetGalley a while back, but did not get to the book before it was published for everyone else. I made it my mission lately to try and get through all my advanced copies, as they kind of just accumulated lately.

This is a short read though, as it does’t have a ton of pages. It clocks in at 147, which is pretty short for a contemporary novel. I flew through it in less than two hours, which was perfect for me at the time.

Let’s get into the review! I don’t want to ramble too much already.

Much love to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for providing an advanced copy of the book (although this review has come out much later).

A look into those at a doomed building in Seoul, and how they slip through the cracks.

This is a gritty novel about those we consider as gritty. It’s set in Seoul, right at the center and heart of the city, but it’s not the Seoul we think of nowadays. Our setting is a slum, an electronics market inside a condemned building. They want to tear down the building and replace it with the new, shiny style of buildings surrounding it.

Our main characters in this novel are Eungyo and Mujae. They are both working at the repair shop, despite having had the opportunity to get an education. Both of them dropped out of school and ended up here, living in the shadows of the city.

Hence the title of the book: all of these people in this area are considered to be shadows. They’re left behind by the modern society in Korea, but they’re still here at the center of this all. I thought of the USA when reading this, as we often blame poor people for being poor and getting handouts, but we don’t excuse the rich for getting handouts. It’s a cruel system.

The system is directly exposed by Hwang’s prose as well; one of the standouts to me was when questioning why we call it slums. She says it’s much easier to tear it down by calling it a slum, because if we called it a person’s home, or many peoples’ homes, then it becomes less ethical.

There are also some elements of fantasy tightly woven into this quick little novel. I honestly didn’t care for the fact there was some fantasy in this, but at the same time it works with the content of the novel and its themes.

This little plot point is that the people of the slums have begun to rise. This could be interpreted literally through them rising into the sky, but it could also be an abandonment of the ideals of poverty, forcing themselves to adapt to the world beyond the slum’s walls and make some more money.

A lot of the book though consists of conversations between Mujae and Eungyo about the state of the world they’re living in right now, as well as how they’re alone in this world except for each other. Without the common place to tether them, they, too, may rise or fall when the building is gone.

Overall Thoughts

As I mentioned before, this is a short novel, but it’s certainly full of impact. I enjoyed reading it, and I did not put it down once while I was churning through its pages.

It’s an important novel, too. When typing this, I’m thinking about how people are being kicked out of their homes in Itaewon, at the heart of Seoul, in order to make room for more development projects. This isn’t a problem unique to Korea as well; the US also faces a lot of gentrification problems.

Pick this one up if you haven’t already. It might be of interest if you’re into modern Korea studies, working class literature, or even if you just want a good book with solid prose.

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