No People Zone: The Desire for Absence and the Fear of Isolation 노 피플 존

A novelist who listens to the pulse of contemporaries, Jung Yi-hyun returns with a new short story collection after nine years.

Relationships that sometimes must be sustained and sometimes must be cut off. A desire to be alone, yet not to be completely alone. These conflicting impulses define the people who stand in between, captured through Jung Yi-hyun's macrolens. Life Pattern Korea.

A leading Korean novelist known for her delicate yet incisive prose depicting the loneliness and desires of those living in modern society, Jung Yi-hyun presents her new short story collection, No People Zone. This is her first new collection in nine years since The Age of Kind Violence, a work that drew significant attention from both critics and readers for its portrayal of modern individuals who exchange hypocrisy and humiliation out of habit, without any particular malice. Life Pattern Korea. The title "No People Zone" appears in the included story "The Only Child" and refers to a phrase that captures the contradictory psychology of modern people who wish to escape the many problems arising within the web of society and relationships and exist in a world without people, while still feeling anxious about complete disconnection and isolation.

Ahead of the publication of No People Zone, Jung Yi-hyun stated in an interview with her editor that while writing the stories in this book, she pursued "more universal and fundamental questions about the relationship between social structures and human alienation" (from the special booklet "Attention Book"). Life Pattern Korea. Long referred to as an "urban recorder" for her remarkably vivid and convincing portrayals of contemporary life, the author now observes modern individuals who are wounded and who wound others, both inside and outside the invisible boundaries of social systems, through her uniquely refined macrolens with even greater precision.

From the 2017 story "Older Sister" to the latest 2025 work "Failure Story Crew", No People Zone contains nine short stories that the author carefully wrote and meticulously refined over a considerable span of time. Life Pattern Korea. With dialogue that feels as if it is heard right beside the reader and a world constructed with high-resolution realism, this collection stands as a story unmistakably of our present era. (From the author's note)

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Author: 정이현
Publisher: 문학동네 Munhakdongne (2025)

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