8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster

Author: Mirinae Lee
Publisher: Hachette Books, 2023
Link to online store *

SLAVE. ESCAPE-ARTIST. MURDERER. TERRORIST. SPY. LOVER. MOTHER. TRICKSTER.

At the Golden Sunset retirement home, it is not unusual for residents to invent stories. So when elderly Ms Mook first begins to unspool her memories, the obituarist listening to her is sceptical. Stories of captivity, friendship, murder, assumed identities and spying. A life that moves from WWII Indonesia to Busan during the Korean war; from cold-war Pyongyang to a Protestant church in China. The adventures are so colourful and various, at times so unbelievable. Surely they can’t all belong to the same woman. Can they?

8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024, announced on 5th March 2024.

Krys Lee, author of How I Became A North Korean:
Mirinae Lee has created an unforgettable character and a bold, inventive narrative that takes us through history. But don’t underestimate 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster; this astonishing, compassionate, and ambitious novel is more than story. Lee cares about how the story is told as much as the story itself. What an incredible debut.

Source: publisher’s website

Entry on Goodreads.com here.

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