Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is the story of a young woman born in Korea towards the end of the twentieth century. It raises questions about endemic prejudice and oppression that are relevant to everyone. Described as ‘riveting, original and uncompromising’, and the most important book to have emerged from South Korea since Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. 

Kim Jiyoung is born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy, made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own, preyed upon by male teachers at school and blamed by her father when she is harassed late at night.

She is a good student who doesn’t get put forward for internships, a model employee who is overlooked for promotion and a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity.

She starts acting strangely, is depressed and mad. Above all she is her own woman, she is every woman.