The Owl Cries: A Novel

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

From the Shirley Jackson Awardwinning author of The Hole, aslow-burning noir thriller with a touch of horror and the uncanny.

A lawyer asking questions. A disappearance. And a vast forest in the mountainsthe western woodswhere the trees huddle close together, emanating a crushing darkness, while a chill dampness fills the air. The forester, Bak Insu, is a recovering alcoholic. He claims no knowledge of the man who disappeared, even though the missing man had worked as a forester just before him. In the little village down the mountain, the shopkeepers will do the same and deny they ever saw or knew the man, though theyre less convincing, and his former supervisor at the forestry institute, Mr. Jin, dismisses his importance. But when an accident and a death derail the investigation and someone attempts to break into his office, Bak Insu finds himself conducting his own inquiry into the goings-on deep in the heart of the western woodsspurred by the mysterious words he discovers on a piece of paper in his desk drawer: The owl lives in the forest.

The Owl Cries is a treat for fans of Stephen King, David Lynch, and the nightmare dystopias of Franz Kafka.

Reviews

Praise from Korea for The Owl Cries
Pyuns forest is like a dark labyrinth. Even just a few inches off the beaten track, and you step into an unstable, wobbly world of horror. Pyun explains that the forest is a place full of dread, but also someplace one must venture into in order to find oneself.Daily Economy (Maeil Kyungjae)

But the forest remains a mystery . . . The forest is a microcosm of the world; and the characters inThe Owl Cries, ignorant, resigned, and at times quick to resort to violence, are indeed the portraits of our own generations.Kyunghyang Shinmun

The book comes across as a detective or mystery novel [but with] an open ending, the case not closed. . . . Perhaps what we can take from the novel is that our problems and answers to them always stem from ourselves, and our lack of self-assertion tends to drive us into a state of despair.Readers News

As the story unravels . . . the mystery only grows. The role of the forest as the backdrop to many secrets, the owl supposedly lurking in its foliage, and the chilling psychology of the people involved in those secrets are illustrated with a hint of the grotesque. . . . The forest seems to be synonymous with our contemporary society, just as seething with suspicion and anxiety. Yes, are we not living in such a forestMunhwa Ilbo

I should perhaps put it this way: our societynot unlike the village in The Owl Criesexploits and deceives its members, with everyone complicit in petty schemes, everyone drunk and unable to tell reality from hallucination. . . . In The Owl Cries, the literary prowess that has won Pyun so many awards is unmistakable.Seoul Shinmun

The Owl Cries . . . explores a number of themes Ive always felt especially intrigued by.It was born out of my favorite motifs, such as the inherently futile journey to fully comprehend the self, a character who does his best but always ends up with a failure, and an inscrutable world wide open to interpretation. . . . Its a book of mine thats always on my mind.Hye-young Pyun on The Owl Cries, Yes TV (Korea) interview

Praise for Hye-young Pyun's Previous Novels
The Hole
Winner of the Shirley Jackson Award
"A Korean take on Misery." Time magazine, "Top 10 Thrillers to Read This Summer"
'[A]taut psychological thriller. . . . The Hole is an unshakable novel about the unfathomable depths of human need." Shelf Awareness

City of Ash and Red
An NPR Great Read, a Barnes & Noble Best Horror Book of 2018, a CrimeReads Ten Best International Crime Fiction Selection
City of Ash and Redwill pull you into its nightmare."NPR
"Kafkaesque . . . Those with a taste for creepy suspense will be rewarded."Publishers Weekly
"Another gruesome masterpiece."Crime Reads

The Law of Lines
A CrimeReadsBest International Crime Novel of 2020
"[A] simmering thriller."The New York Times Book Review
"[A]compelling existential thriller."Wall Street Journal
"Pure, hard-scrabble noir. . . Harrowing and elegiac."LitHub

Author Bio

Hye-young Pyunwas born in 1972 in Seoul and earned her undergraduate degree in creative writing and graduate degree in Korean literature from Hanyang University. Her published works include the short story collections Aoi Garden, To the Kennels, Evening Courtship, and Night Passes; and the novels City of Ash and Red, They Went to the Western Forest, The Law of Lines, The Hole, and Let the Dead. She has received many awards in Korea, including the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award, the Yi Hyo-Seok Literature Prize, the Today's Young Writer Award, the Dong-in Literary Award, the Yi Sang Literary Award, and theContemporary Literature (Hyundai Munhak) Award. Her novel TheHole was the 2017 winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, and City of Ash and Red was an NPR Great Read. In 2019, she was awarded the Kim Yujeong Literary Award for her short story "Hotel Window." Her short stories have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and Words Without Borders. She currently teaches creative writing at Myongji University and lives in Seoul, Korea.

Sora Kim-Russell's translations include, besides The Hole,City of Ash and Red, and The Law of Lines by Hye-young Pyun,Un-su Kim's The Plotters;Hwang Sok-yong's At Dusk, which was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize; and Suah Bae'sNowhere to be Found. Her full list of publications can be found atsorakimrussell.com. She lives in Seoul, Korea.