Overview

Hornclaw is a sixty-five-year-old female contract killer who is considering retirement. A fighter who has experienced loss and grief early on in life, she lives in a state of self-imposed isolation, with just her dog, Deadweight, for company. While on an assassination job for the 'disease control' company she works for, Hornclaw makes an uncharacteristic error, causing a sequence of events that brings her past well and truly into the present. Threatened with sabotage by a young male upstart and battling new desires and urges when she least expects them, Hornclaw steels her resolve, demonstrating that no matter their age, the female of the species is always more deadly than the male.

Full Product Details

9781838856434

Table of Contents

Reviews

Gu deftly describes the confusion of a sixty-something female killer who comes face to face, now aged and weaker, with her long-overdue human feelings she's repressed. Gu's unfaltering focus and masterful writing conjure up a persuasive, transformative narrative of a woman who had to live like an emotionless machine and eventually comes to acknowledge the very human and universal emotion deep within herself. Her unusual relationships with various minor characters lead to many engaging episodes, through which Gu's mastery of storytelling shines * * Kiho Ilbo * * Gu says that the distance between imagination and daydreaming is but a millimetre. She's the writer who beats down the boundary between reality and imagination . . . Her writing is so evocative and haunting, even after I finished the book . . . I had to revisit Bruised Fruit four times in three months * * Civic News * * This novel breaks out of the box of what constitutes a mystery thriller with a killer as the heroine and into a much broader literary territory. Bruised Fruit is a cruel yet beautiful study on what is the fate of being, on bruising and disintegrating life, and on all the inevitable truths of human life * * Chunji Ilbo * * There has never been a Korean novel with such a groundbreaking heroine * * Segye Ilbo * * The sixty-something female killer Hornclaw, who's been making a living as a professional killer, might come off as an ordinary woman at first sight, but is an intimidating person with quite the muscle and ammunition. I couldn't hope for a better heroine - a truly powerful character with an ageing human body * * Book DB * *

Author Information

Gu Byeong-mo was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1976. She made her literary debut in 2009 when her novel Wizard Bakery won the second Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction. Her 2015 short-story collection Geugeosi namaneun anigireul received the Today's Writer Award and Hwang Sun-won New Writers' Award. This is her third novel, and the first to be translated into the English language. Chi-Young Kim is an award-winning literary translator and editor based in Los Angeles. A recipient of the Man Asian Literary Prize (2011), she has translated works by You-jeong Jeong, Sun-mi Hwang, Young-ha Kim, Kyung Ran Jo, J.M. Lee and Kyung-sook Shin, among others.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available