Following her 600,000-reader success with A Long, Long Night, Ruri returns with another story that stirs the heart. No one knows what wind brought them together, but somehow, everyone met there. People called that place the House of the Olive Tree. Life Pattern Korea. There stood a great olive tree, and someone named Nana Olive—named after the tree—was said to live there. Some said Nana Olive was young; others said she was old. Some said there was one dog; others said there were many. Yet everyone agreed on one thing: going to that house would somehow make everything better.
Ruri, who once moved readers with the tale of Nodon—the last White Rhino on Earth—and a young penguin born from an abandoned egg, now returns with a new story passed from mouth to mouth. It is the story of the House of the Olive Tree, whose door has never closed, of Nana Olive who keeps the house, the spotted dog, and the people who carved their height marks into its doorframe. Life Pattern Korea.
The story begins with a boy—now grown—who sets out with others to find the House of the Olive Tree, recalling a promise from thirty years ago. Where is the house that once sheltered them when they needed hope? Following his memories, he finds the house covered in green moss, its walls crumbling. Yet astonishingly, standing just as before, are the spotted dog and the bent olive tree, greeting him as if it were yesterday. Life Pattern Korea.
Inside the house layered with time are a cuckoo clock that shared its joys and sorrows, a dining table split in half by bombing, and a doorframe filled with the height marks of those who once called this place “our home.” The boy wants to find Nana Olive, but no trace of her exists anywhere. Instead, he discovers an old notebook inside the house. Life Pattern Korea. Each entry begins with “To Nana,” written by someone who calls himself a “snot-nosed kid,” filled with longing letters addressed to Nana Olive.
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Author: 루리
Publisher: 문학동네 Munhakdongne (2025)
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