Equal parts muckraking novel, transnational love story, and socially engaged panorama, Cho Chongnae’s The Human Jungle portrays China on the verge of becoming the world’s dominant economic force.
Against a backdrop of rapidly morphing urban landscapes, readers meet migrant workers, Korean manufacturers out to save a few bucks, high-flying venture capitalists, street thugs, and shakedown artists. The picture of China that emerges is at turns unsettling, awe-inspiring, and heart-breaking. Chongnae deftly portrays a giant awakening to its own raw, volatile, and often uncontrollable power.
Translators Bruce Fulton and Ju-Chan Fulton have condensed three of Chongnae’s Korean novels, each of which sold more than one million copies in South Korea, into this single English-language edition.