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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher
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THE APOLOGY

Jimin Han

This gem of a novel is part family epic and post ghost story, set between Seoul and the U.S., and follows the story of a 105-year-old Korean woman who receives a letter from family in the U.S. Ten days later, she finds herself thrust into the afterlife, fighting to head off a curse that will otherwise devastate generations to come.
Jeonga Cha has always shouldered the burden of upholding the family name. When she sent her daughter-in-law to America to cover up an illegitimate birth, she was simply doing what was needed to preserve the reputations of her loved ones. How could she have known that decades later, this decision would return to haunt her - threatening to tear apart her bond with her beloved son, her relationship with her infuriatingly insolent sisters, and the future of the family she has worked so hard to protect?

Part ghost story and part family epic, The Apology is an incisive tale of family and diaspora, reaching back to the days of Japanese colonialism and the Korean War, and told through the singular voice of a defiant, funny, and unforgettable centenarian.

Jimin Han was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in Rhode Island, Ohio, and New York. Her first novel, A Small Revolution, was published by Little A to great reviews, was a CNN Best Summer Read of the Year, an Entropy Best Fiction Books of the Year, a Buzzfeed "One of 6 Binge-Worthy Books," and one of Redbook's "20 Best Books by Women to Read of Spring 2017". She has written for NPR's Weekend America, Poets & Writers Magazine, Catapult Magazine, Platypus Press, and Citric Acid Literary Journal, among others. Han teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and Pace University, as well as at community writing centers. She lives outside New York City.
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Book

Published 2023-08-01 by Little Brown

Book

Published 2023-08-01 by Little Brown

Comments

The Apology shows Jimin Han's talents as a master storyteller, interweaving questions of sisterhood and separation, generational secrets and ancestral love, through a singular and unforgettable centenarian voice.

NPR's Eyder Peralta talks with Jimin Han about her novel, "The Apology." Read more...

Han's narrator is sly, funny, and flawed... [THE APOLOGY is] a satisfying tale with vivid relationships that will keep readers curious about this complex family shaped by war, loyalty, class-consciousness, and love.

It begins with a bus accident, but really it began so long ago. THE APOLOGY is a work of tenderness and empathy, a portrait of family and memory, of different generations colliding across multiple dimensions both literal and the afterlife. Jimin Han has conjured more than ghosts here, and you should listen to her story.

Jeonga Cha is a wholly original character.While such a plot could have been the stuff of tragedy, Han mines the material largely for its comic potential. Whether dead or alive, Jeonga is a larger-than-life character, stubborn, judgmental, always active... THE APOLOGY is an imaginative work that draws upon traditional Korean Buddhist beliefs about the afterlife to explore the long-term consequences of decisions made under the value system of a different era. Read more...

A riveting, hilarious, and moving tale of a woman on a journey through two countries, and two planes of existence. An authentic and wonderfully executed tale of secrets and their consequences.

Jimin Han is a master of telling unique and compelling tales through fascinating storytelling techniques... Han's latest offering is part ghost story, part mystery, part family epic, and part humorous travel adventure. Read more...

...arresting drama... literally haunting... THE APOLOGY is a life-affirming story about finding family and making amends.

Jeonga Cha, a centenarian with two centenarian sisters, has done her best to hide a family birth secret, even sacrificing relationships with her son and her beloved to do so. Now, at the end of her life, that secret threatens to curse the family for generations. Speaking from beyond the grave, Jeonga narrates the mystery of why we make the choices we make even when they hurt the ones we love. Like magic, this book is at once a page-turning mystery, a supernatural odyssey, a family saga, and a Korean melodrama. Count me forever among Han's audience.

What a superb story this is, unweaving the tangle of family history - and the wrongheaded honor that has walled out love - as this remarkable novel moves from the unguessable to the expansively imagined. It's a maze of leaps - across boundaries beyond the known - as one woman grapples with the impossible question of how wrongs can be righted. A memorable and wonderfully original book.

The Apology is an uncanny high wire actarch, tender, mercurial. Jimin Han feels like Iris Murdoch's heir here, even as this novel came from an artistry that is all her own. This is a story unlike any other of Korea and America, with a mother's love made majestic, a deathless avenger, shrewd and wild, and an ajumma willing to do anything for her family, even from beyond her grave.

Jimin Han has woven a marvelous, madcap novel of love and loyalty, the living and the dead, and a family that's haunted - by the past, by war, by distance and silence carried on across generations. At turns hilarious and heartbreaking... An epic, intricate, and wildly entertaining journey of reckoning and reconnection, across oceans and astral planes, The Apology is a powerful fable of family secrets and the lengths we go to keep them - and how the truth, in the end, will set us free.

Jeonga's narration is sharp and witty and a touch sly as she describes her present, disembodied state - the in-between, purgatory-like space her consciousness now occupies - as well as the events that led to her death... This is an enthralling multigenerational tale of familial secrets, trauma and healing.

Comedic and heart-wrenching... It's not shying away from the grief, but it's so funny too. Read more...

Told through a singular, unforgettable voice, this supernatural, surprisingly funny novel asks just how far a person would go to keep a lid on family secrets.

In The Apology, Jimin Han deftly threads a comedic line through a multigenerational family chock full of grievances and perceived slights. The impudent yet vulnerable narrator Jeonga shows us something she'd never reveal to her sisters: her pain and her joy. She'll fight to the death - and beyond - to do what she thinks is right, and she'll win the hearts of readers while doing so.

An intriguing, genre-bending novel that proves that the bonds - and grudges - of siblinghood exist beyond the grave. Insightful about secret-keeping and hopeful about the redemptive power of love, Jimin Han is a literary medium for imperfect families.

Her past life of privilege often clashes humorously with the errands of her afterlife, but it's her strong and serene sense of purpose that will delight anyone with relatives who tend to micromanage. Read more...

The Apology is a vividly rendered novel about the long life spans of secrets, featuring an unforgettable 105-year-old narrator who is as stubborn and proud as she is spirited. With depth, emotion, and total clarity of vision, Jimin Han has crafted a wonderfully moving story about love and loss, betrayal and forgiveness, and the lengths that one woman will go to in this world and the next to undo the mistakes of the past

Korean American fiction is exploding... Han's novel, set in Korea and America, is about an ajumma who is determined to keep taking care of her family from beyond the grave, whether they want her to or not. It's also a great novel to read if you ever wanted, say, more novels from Iris Murdoch (I am like this). Read more...

Bold, original, and utterly captivating, The Apology is a sweeping intergenerational saga, delivered by one of the sharpest, most memorable voices I've ever read. A stunning new novel by a writer whose work I've long admired.

Author's podcast appearance: ...Han joins us to talk about the humor in her characters, claiming space as a writer, what she's learned while teaching and more... Read more...

Author's essay on Letting Your Experiences Simmer Read more...

Jimin Han's The Apology is a captivating multigenerational story of love and secrets, forgiveness and redemption, and about how our decisions and actions can reverberate through time, touching the lives of others in ways we cannot anticipate. Han's clear-eyed insights and rich imaginative powers are on full and impressive display in this intricately woven portrait of a fierce, determined, and wickedly funny matriarch at the end of her life (and beyond). An original and memorable novel. I did not want it to end!

Author Jimin Han on Missing People, Second Chances, and Stubborn Characters Read more...