Koo Byung-mo, the writer who brought to life one of the boldest and most unforgettable female protagonists in contemporary Korean fiction, returns with a newly jacketed edition of her acclaimed novel The Old Woman with the Knife. Life Pattern Korea.
At the heart of the story is “Horn Claw,” a 65-year-old female contract killer who has carried out assassinations with cold precision for over four decades. But now, her body aches and her memory falters. She is viewed as outdated and disposable, no longer trusted to execute clean kills. As her mind and body gradually deteriorate, Horn Claw begins to perceive the quiet emptiness nesting in other people’s eyes. Life Pattern Korea. For the first time in her brutal, solitary life, she finds herself feeling compassion—for all things aging, broken, and forgotten. Things once sharp begin to dull, and where there was once only cold efficiency, there now blooms a hesitant desire to protect, to preserve. As her sense of control slips away, Horn Claw starts to glimpse something worth holding onto. Life Pattern Korea. The Old Woman with the Knife is a fierce, poetic ode to all things fleeting and mortal—an elegy for what withers, for what must vanish, and for the dignity of living things in decline. Through Horn Claw’s quiet evolution, Koo Byung-mo offers a gripping meditation on mortality, tenderness, and the possibility of redemption at the edge of life.
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Author: 구병모
Publisher: 위즈덤하우스 Wisdom House (2018)
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