Unmissable Korean Novels

K-Pop bands, K-dramas and webtoons have become widely popular in recent years. But how about Korean novels? Check out our hand-picked titles for fans of Korean culture everywhere!

Updated June 18, 2025
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The plotters
Kim, ?n-su
Paper Book
"[A] powerhouse of a novel....It reads as if Haruki Murakami rewrote The Day of the Jackal." - Locus Magazine "Editor's Choice" New York Times Book Review "The Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2019" CrimeReads "Most...
8 lives of a century-old trickster
Lee, Mirinae
Paper Book
"Fantastically original doesn't begin to describe this exhilarating globe-spanning, decade-hopping masterpiece. Lee has achieved the impossible--from a fractured century of agonies and betrayals, she has woven a novel of immense beauty and regeneration." -- Junot Díaz, author of ...
Concerning my daughter
Kim, Hye-jin
Paper Book
Prize-winning Korean author Kim Hye-Jin's debut confronts familial love, duty, mortality, and generational schism through the incendiary gaze of a tradition-bound mother faced with her daughter's queer relationship. When a widowed,...
Love in the big city
Pak, Sang-y?ng
Paper Book
A funny, transporting, surprising, and poignant novel that was one of the highest-selling debuts of recent years in Korea, Love in the Big City tells the story of a young gay man searching for happiness in the lonely city of Seoul Love in the Big City is the English...
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
Bo-reum, Hwang
Paper Book
INSTANT USA TODAY BESTSELLER * NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER INDIE NEXT PICK * Debutiful Most Anticipated Book of 2024 * Powell's Pick of the Month * A Bookshop Best Book of the Year So Far The Korean smash hit available for the first...
If I had your face
Cha, Frances
Paper Book
A riveting debut novel set in contemporary Seoul, Korea, about four young women making their way in a world defined by impossible standards of beauty, after-hours room salons catering to wealthy men, ruthless social hierarchies, and K-pop mania   "Powerful and...
Mater 2-10
Sok-yong, Hwang.
Paper Book
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE International Booker-nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story--an epic tale that threads together a century of Korean history. In contemporary Seoul, a laid-off worker stages a months-long sit-in atop a...
Y/n : a novel
Yi, Esther
Paper Book
Finalist for the 2023 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2023 New York Times 2023 Critics' Pick New Yorker Best Book of 2023 (Essential Read) NPR Best Book of 2023 TIME Must-Read Book of 2023
When we fell apart
Wiley, Soon
Paper Book
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022:  Harper's Bazaar  *  Vogue  *  Good Housekeeping  *  CrimeReads  *  BookBub  *  Veranda  *  Shondaland  *  Debutiful  *  PureWow *  and more! ...
Greek Lessons
Kang, Han.
Paper Book
FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE   "[Han Kang's] intense poetic prose . . . exposes the fragility of human life."--The Nobel Committee for Literature, in the citation for the Nobel Prize   NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE * A...
The vegetarian : a novel
Han, Kang
Paper Book
FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE "[Han Kang's] intense poetic prose . . . exposes the fragility of human life."--The Nobel Committee for Literature, in the citation for the Nobel Prize A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ...
Miss Kim knows : and other stories
Cho, Nam-ju
Paper Book
Written in Cho Nam-joo's signature razor-sharp prose, Miss Kim Knows follows eight women as they confront how gender shapes and orders their lives. A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against at work. A woman grows old. A woman...
Winter in Sokcho
Dusapin, Élisa Shua
Paper Book
2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE As if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman--a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author It's winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea...
The island of Sea Women
See, Lisa
Paper Book
THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "A mesmerizing new historical novel" (O, The Oprah Magazine) from Lisa See, the bestselling author of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, about female friendship and devastating family secrets on a small Korean island. ...
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
Paper Book
Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person. In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old "millennial everywoman," she has recently left her white-collar desk job--in order to care for her newborn...

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