Employee No. 9

Employee No. 9

With shades of Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice and Choi Jin-young’s Hunger , Employee No. 9 runs a psychological gauntlet of money, power, responsibility, and the daily struggle for survival. No. 9 is in trouble. His son’s college tuition is coming due, his wife needs surgery after taking double shifts at a grocery store, the apartment building they bought as a nest egg is falling apart, and the company he helped build is trying to force him into early retirement. When he refuses, the mid-level IT man is demoted to sales and given increasingly impossible tasks. As his salary dwindles and the humiliations mount, No. 9 must decide where his loyalties lie. If he fights back, how far will the company go to stop him? With her urgent and timely novel, award-winning Korean author Kim Hye-jin questions how long we can endure a broken system. In a rigged game, is there an alternative to playing out your hand? Kim Hye-jin is an award-winning author from Daegu, South Korea. She won the 2023 Kim Yujeong Literary Award, the JoongAng Literature Award in 2013 for Central Station , the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature in 2018 for Concerning My Daughter , and the Daesan Literary Award in 2020 for Employee No. 9 . She was also the Special Award Laureate of the 4th Lee Hochul Literary Prize for Peace in 2020. Jamie Chang is a literary translator. Her translation of Cho Nam-joo’s Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature. She is the recipient of the Daesan Foundation Translation Grant and a three-time recipient of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea Grant. She is based in Nova Scotia.