My Upstairs Neighbors 윗집 부부

A Headline-Making Novel That Secured an English-Language Rights Deal Worth Over KRW 100 Million Before Publication.
Pre-Released as an Audiobook and Ranked No. 1 Overall.

A Brilliant New Novel from Hwang Bo-Reum, Author of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, Beloved by One Million Readers Worldwide!
"What Kind of Neighbors Live Around You?" Life Pattern Korea.

My Upstairs Neighbors, the second novel by Hwang Bo-Reum, will be published by Clayhouse, following the extraordinary global success of her debut novel, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, which has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Her previous novel sold a cumulative 300,000 copies in Korea and was published in 50 countries, creating a remarkable phenomenon as its distinctly Korean story quickly captured the hearts of readers around the world. Life Pattern Korea. It achieved further distinction by winning first place in the Translated Fiction category of the 2024 Japan Booksellers' Award and placing third in the Fiction category of the 2024 Goodreads Choice Awards. These achievements demonstrated that Korean literature had firmly established its place on the global literary stage.

Four years later, Hwang Bo-Reum is ready to meet readers again with her second novel, My Upstairs Neighbors. Even before its publication, the novel secured an English-language rights deal worth over KRW 100 million, as well as publishing agreements in 15 countries with total advances exceeding KRW 500 million. Life Pattern Korea. It is now set to reach readers around the world, including those in Spain, the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, and Japan. "This is the first time I have seen publishers from so many countries compete to acquire a book before it was even published," said Hong Soon-chul, CEO of BC Agency, which handled the book's international rights sales. He described the result as "an unprecedented achievement."

My Upstairs Neighbors was also released in advance as an audiobook through Millie's Library, where it received an enthusiastic response, immediately reaching No. 1 overall and attracting more than 10,000 listeners within a single week. Life Pattern Korea. Listeners who experienced the novel first as an audiobook left glowing reviews, including "I could not stop crying," "I laughed and cried, and enjoyed every moment," and "It delivers deep emotion through vivid and accessible writing." Their responses suggest that the novel retains the emotional warmth of the author's previous work while offering an even more delightful and beautiful story.

My Upstairs Neighbors centers on Oh Gyeong-jik, an indifferent and prickly man in his seventies. While watching the news one day, Gyeong-jik hears that Korea is not merely a country with an ultra-low birth rate, but one facing an exceptionally severe decline in births. Life Pattern Korea. Born in an era when the total fertility rate exceeded six, he finds himself living in a South Korea he could never have imagined. Sensing that he must do something for his country, he begins approaching the couple living upstairs, who until then had been little more than complete strangers.

In her previous novel, the author explored the wounds, both large and small, of people who had strayed from their expected paths, as well as the loose bonds that formed between them. This time, she opens the story by raising the major social issue of the declining birth rate. The novel examines the difficult realities of Korean society that make it hard to have children, working conditions that push employees to the brink, and the breakdown in communication with older generations that struggle to understand the circumstances facing young people. Life Pattern Korea. Beneath this vast issue, the author brings the challenges confronting society to the surface one by one, carefully observing how these enormous problems affect individuals and what happens when those individuals encounter one another. Literary critic Park Hye-jin describes the novel as "an evolved form of feel-good fiction and a work that further expands the range of Hwang Bo-Reum's writing," proposing the genre name Social Feel-Good. Readers will not discover a single solution capable of transforming society all at once within these personal stories. However, for those searching for the smallest signs of hope that literature and stories of ordinary human lives can offer, My Upstairs Neighbors will provide a faithful and deeply moving answer.

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