One of Entropy’s Best Fiction Books of 2017
One of CNN’s Best Beach Reads for Summer 2017
One of Buzzfeed’s 6 Binge-Worthy Books of May 2017
One of Redbook’s 20 Best Books by Women to Read for Spring 2017
“A Small Revolution has all the makings of a riveting sensory experience…Han’s careful unspooling of the narrative thread that holds the three pieces together is a powerful tapestry in reverse.” —Hyphen Magazine
“A Small Revolution is a novel of remarkably rendered extremes…It is an ambitious and accomplished debut that pulls us out of our comfortable window seats and places us in a room, in a young woman’s heart, and in a nascent democracy’s earliest days.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
“Swift, and timely…A worthy and cinematic debut.” —Electric Literature
“In her novel A Small Revolution, Han handles serious topics—mental illness, political activism, domestic violence—deftly.” —Los Angeles Times
“It’s the courage of voices like Yoona, and Jimin Han, that force change. I couldn’t stop reading A Small Revolution once I began. It stirred a revolution inside of me and is one of those books that I’ll be thinking about for a long time to come.” —Entropy
“Entwining personal and political histories on either side of the globe…Han’s novel exudes a universal immediacy about what can happen when safety, and sanity, are repeatedly threatened…A resonating parable for today’s volatile, fearful times.” —Bloom
“We’ve all wondered what it’s like inside the rooms where the horrors unfold. Jimin Han’s relentless, timely A Small Revolution grabs you by the collar and pulls you inside, then back through her sympathetic character’s history to answer that question: How does a good girl end up inside a brutal disaster? How does young love become a mirage of political activism—and accident become hostage-taking and murder? Open the book; remember to breathe.” —Gwendolen Gross, author of When She Was Gone and The Orphan Sister
“On the heels of South Korea’s 1980s era pro-democracy uprisings, Jimin Han’s gripping debut novel, A Small Revolution, explores the volatile space between love and loss, desperation and deed.” —Julie Iromuanya, author of Mr. and Mrs. Doctor, a finalist for 2016 PEN/Faulkner Award and 2016 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Debut Fiction Award
“Jimin Han’s debut novel, A Small Revolution, is a riveting and mysterious tale of young love, political intrigue, family secrets, and dangerous obsession rendered in prose so gripping I couldn’t put it down.” —Joy Castro, author of The Truth Book and Hell or High Water
“With exquisite precision, Jimin Han’s A Small Revolution transforms the claustrophobic confines of an unfolding hostage crisis into an expansive meditation on the collisions between past and present, hope and fear, life and death. Elegant, elegiac, and unsettling, each new page offers insight and revelation.” —Steve Edwards, author of Breaking into the Backcountry
“Jimin Han’s A Small Revolution packs a big punch. With a front story taken from the headlines of gunmen on college campuses and a haunting backstory of events in Korea, our protagonist is forced into walking a tightrope between two worlds, as well as the past and present.” —Alan Russell, author of Lost Dog
2017-02-21
In this compact debut novel, a young woman receives a swift education in love, violence, and the politics of 1980s Korea.Yoona's childhood as a first-generation Korean-American was a quiet attempt at normalcy, streaked with guilt, the result of her father's frequent physical abuse of her mother (and Yoona's sense that she should have done something to protect her). The summer before Yoona leaves her small New York hometown to attend college, she participates in a multiweek student tour of South Korea, where she meets Jaesung and Lloyd, two Korean-American boys with strong political convictions. Though she is wary of emotional attachment, Yoona falls hard for Jaesung and warms to the unsettlingly radical Lloyd. She is rewarded cruelly for both. Upon starting her freshman year of college, Yoona learns that Jaesung and Lloyd, on their way to a meeting, were in a car accident; Jaesung was killed. Lloyd returns to the States, unhinged, and embroils Yoona in his fantasy: that Jaesung is still alive, captured by militants, and in need of rescue. Yoona participates in the fantasy for some time, but when she finally tries to distance herself from Lloyd, he holds her and three friends hostage in her dorm room at gunpoint. This hostage situation is, in fact, the frame for the entire novel, and it's not just the horrible suspense in that room that gives the story tension. Han keeps the lens tight on Yoona's increasingly shaky perspective, so despite Yoona's strangely adult, calm narration, facts become unreliable and greater contextualization slippery, if present at all. In the background are the clashes between Korean and American cultures; North and South Korean politics; teenage idealism and the heartbreaking adult world. Intriguing, suspenseful, sometimes frustrating; an eerily timeless story.
