Our Neighborhood Library 우리동네 도서관

Winner of the Hwang Sun-won Literary Award and selected as required reading at Oxford University.
A bold new novel by Cha In-pyo, exploring new horizons in literature.

Novelist Cha In-pyo, who has drawn literary attention through bold experiments and a wide range of subjects, returns after two years with the full-length novel Our Neighborhood Library. Life Pattern Korea.

In Someday We Will Look at the Same Star, Cha gave voice to victims of wartime violence. In Mermaid Hunting, he examined anthropocentrism and human desire, while Their Day portrayed the passionate stories of people struggling through life. Life Pattern Korea. In this new novel, he raises profound questions about the desire to create, the limits of creation, and the relationship between writers and readers.

The novel features a writer referred to as "I," who goes to a neighborhood library every day to work on a novel. The writer is developing a story about Beon-gak, a painter from the ancient Korean kingdom of Goguryeo. After suffering a tragic event, Beon-gak becomes a man of firm conviction and declares that he will never paint anything he has not seen with his own eyes. Life Pattern Korea. However, a nobleman threatens his life and forces him to paint a mural for his tomb. Beon-gak is also ordered to include a dragon that the nobleman supposedly captured during his lifetime, even though no one knows what it looked like. Caught between his principles and a threat to his life, Beon-gak confronts the memories of those who once joined the dragon hunt and becomes consumed by questions about a being whose existence cannot be proven, yet has survived through written records.

Meanwhile, in the present day, an actual dragon suddenly appears before "I" as he writes Beon-gak's story. Far from inspiring the novelist, the dragon appears whenever it pleases, whispering constantly about the writer's ambitions and limitations and throwing him into confusion. Life Pattern Korea. Tormented by the challenges he faces as a novelist, "I" also becomes entangled with the people at the neighborhood library and begins to question more deeply what it truly means to write.

As the story moves between reality and fiction, every character, despite living in a different era and pursuing a different purpose, is driven by desire: the desire to complete a piece of writing, the desire to bring someone back to life, and the desire to survive. The novel moves beyond interpreting desire simply as an individual's sense of lack and asks whether it can instead become a link connecting one person to another. Life Pattern Korea. In this way, the novel begins as "a story about chasing a dragon" and gradually becomes "a process of discovering the people beside us."

The driving force behind an author's acts of creation and documentation ultimately lies with the reader. In return, readers receive help from writers in bringing their own voices into the world. Life Pattern Korea. The novel refuses to abandon socially marginalized and vulnerable characters such as Chang-ryeol, Song-i, the elderly gentleman, and Chulleongi, viewing them not with pity but through a perspective of connection and respect. Through this virtuous cycle, readers are invited to reflect once again on the power of stories to connect people and inspire solidarity.

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