This novella absolutely floored me, dark, lyrical, and completely unforgettable. Choi Jin-young takes something as unsettling as cannibalism and transforms it into a haunting meditation on grief, love, and survival under crushing inequality. The writing is both spare and poetic, pulling you into a world that’s grotesque yet strangely tender. Highly recommend if you loved The Vegetarian by Han Kang or Earthlings by Sayaka Murata, and you’re in the mood for a story that will linger with you long after you close the book.

I have honestly many thoughts and at tge same time none. This book left me speechless, because on one hand its morally conflicting with the topic of eating your loved one, on the other hand it was melancholic and I felt for the characters deeply.
Their life's were far from what you would call an easy life.
I felt so many emotions from being disturbed to saddened to hopeful till I remember the premise of the book and that in fact there is no happy ending. Also the topic of death was brought into a new light for me.

This was a different take on a horror that definitely paid off.
It was a love story but such a different way of telling and adding horror aspects

This covered some heavy topics and the way it explored love, grief and life was shocking, yet painful and raw. I did find that the narrative was a bit disjointed at times, but overall it was very well written.

I think this one tried too hard to be out-there and it shows. Slow paced. Unrelenting characters. It just wasn’t my cup of tea

Is life easier without knowing? Is it even helpful to understand and express the emotions that govern you?

One of the most intense, raw, horrifying novels I've read, maybe ever! The intensity of emotions is just out of this world. Love and grief as the 2 sides of the same coin. The injustice of the world, damning people into lives they don't want, into suffering. Can death be a relief?

Short but powerful!

This was a highly anticipated title for me, the premise sounded so good but I ended up not liking it that much.
The concept is good and the writing is really engaging too, I read the whole thing in one sitting. But I was never super invested in the characters’ story, as wrong as it sounds I wish the cannibalism aspect had more of an impact/ was more of a big moment in the story.

My main problem could be due to the formatting of the proof I received from netgalley, but there was absolutely no distinction between the POVs and it was switching mid paragraph sometimes which made it quite confusing.

Nihilistic and hopeful
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Wow, oh wow, oh wow. If something can be both nihilistic and hopeful at once, this is it. It’s the simplest of books, the premise laid out within the first few of many short chapters: Dam finds the body of her lover Gu and, unable to imagine living without him, decides there’s only one way to keep him with her forever—to eat him.

As the book proceeds to lay out how Gu and Dam get to that point, and we see from both their perspectives the immediate aftermath of Gu’s death, we also see a portrait of a stratum of South Korea that isn’t and cannot be glamourised: the working poor, indebted to powerful forces over which they have no control, their lives beyond precarious, treated as little more than meat. And so Dam regards Gu as her meat, her possession. This is not for the squeamish but it’s full of things to consider and rail against.

Four and a half stars

Hunger tackles some really heavy topics—poverty, injustice, survival—and it doesn’t hold back. The characters felt real and raw, and there’s a lot of emotion packed into a short book.

However, the shifting narratives were abrupt and confusing. Due to this, the story felt disjointed and unfinished.

Overall, the themes are powerful. I just wish the structure had been a little more cohesive. Worth reading, but it might not be for everyone.

This exploration of life, love, and grief takes things to the next level with a spot of casual cannibalism! Shocking, and at the same time tragic. This is a read in one sitting kind of book - so long as your stomach can handle it!

An incredibly strange, haunting tale that pulls no punches. The narrative flow was a tad confusing at times, though it lent itself well to the weird vibe of the book.

Hunger is a book I started reading with a lot of desire because the premise seemed incredibly murky and devastating at the same time. How does someone have to feel or be in their mindset to end up crossing paths with the person they love the most because they feel only she has the right to stay with them? That they'll stay together like they promised?
However, as I read on and we see the present and past from both characters' perspectives, I became increasingly confused and realized it wasn't going the way I thought it would.

Something very confusing is how it goes back and forth between the past and present, as well as the point-of-view shifts. They should have been clearer because it took several sentences to fully understand what was happening, where we were, and what was happening. That slowed down the reading a lot, and the chapters were short.

I don't feel like this novel was for me. I do think it has a good dose of reality regarding Korean society (and in general), and that it was very thoughtful. But I never connected.

Thank you so much, Octopus Publishing, for the ARC I read on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of this book was SO interesting but unfortunately the book fell short for me.

Whilst the beginning of this story was good, reading through this was challenging, mainly due to the structure of the book. I was confused at times as to who was speaking/whose POV I was reading from and had to re-read certain sections multiple times to be able to understand what was going on.

Whilst the above is true, the story itself was interesting and heartbreaking and I did feel for the characters.

Many thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for allowing me the opportunity to read this interesting book!

As soon as I saw the cover for ‘Hunger’ I knew I needed to read it. I hunted down the summary and my conviction was cemented: this book was going to be a bit of me. While I had a few issues with it, I was pretty much spot on.

A woman finds her man murdered on the street - and time stands still.

Until she cradles his corpse to her chest and carries it home, where she disinfects every inch of skin before seating herself to begin. What follows reverberates from this realm into the next, where the man is witnessing his own funeral.

Together, the lovers lament a lifetime of working themselves to the bone in a country sucking everyone dry - but time's up. The woman is already eating and beating them at their own barbaric game as she entombs the body in her own, where her soulmate will live again.

‘Hunger’ throws you right in at the deep end with Dam dealing with the death of Gu and beginning to eat bits of him. I have to admit that there were some moments that made me feel a bit sick (mostly eating his hair and nails shudder), but it wasn’t as present of an element in the novella as I was expecting. We spend a lot of time watching Dam and Gu getting to this point: meeting as children, becoming friends and growing into lovers. There’s also their time apart and glimpses at other relationships, but always the pull that draws them back together time and time again.

In that journey back to the past, the perspective melds back and forth between Gu and Dam and I have to admit that I sometimes got a little lost in who I was reading about as there’s not a distinct shift or a significant change in the voice of the two characters. For such a short novella, I spent an unexpected amount of time a little confused and grasping to figure out who’s memory I was in. It did distance me a little from them and from the story as I wasn’t able to fully settle into it.


There’s something very compulsive about ‘Hunger’, even with my confusion. Gu’s death is a mystery for most of the novel, though it doesn’t read like a mystery and there are no real twists or revelations, just a slow unfurling of what led up to the opening moment of the novel.

For such a short book, ‘Hunger’ comments on a lot. We trace the trappings of growing up in an area with little room for growth and possibility, the all-consuming legacy of terrible parents, of inherited debt, of grief and loss, and of love. There were moments where I wish there was more time for some points to be explored in more depth, but there was something quite poetic about the fleeting glimpse of them as they wove into Gu and Dam’s lives and deaths.

‘Hunger’s is a dark and thought-provoking read perfect for fans of ‘Hunchback’ and ‘Natural Beauty’.

Thank you to NetGalley and Brazen for the review copy.

Written by Sophie

This is a haunting, surreal novella that blends grief, love, and rage into something raw and unforgettable. It was unlike anything I have read before

An unsettling tale of star-crossed lovers, Gu and Dam, struggling to retain their bond even though one of them is now dead. Choi Jin-young’s short novel is structured as a series of parallel monologues, Gu and Dam take turns to tell their story, to outline the contours of their relationship – each of Gu’s sections headed with a black circle, Dam’s with a white. After Gu’s brutally murdered, Dam takes his body back to their dilapidated room and slowly begins to consume his corpse, refusing to be separated even by death. It's a ritualistic act of mourning, an expression of grief and love that for Dam seems akin to a sacrament. As she carefully absorbs Gu’s flesh into her own, Dam reflects on how they met, the circumstances that led up to these moments. From beyond death, Gu too thinks about their past and the life he was forced to live.

But, despite the cannibalism, this isn’t a horror novel in any strict sense. Instead, Choi Jin-young’s intent on exposing the horrors of contemporary Korean society: the destructiveness of rampant capitalism, class inequalities, and the slow violence of necropolitics, those who’re valued and those deemed disposable. Working-class Gu and Dam soon realised they had no hope of a bright future; the possibilities open to the children of the wealthy the stuff of science fiction. So, they’ve supported themselves in dead-end jobs, barely scraping by. Their fate was sealed when Gu’s parents disappeared, leaving behind an enormous debt that then became Gu’s responsibility. But the money came from one of Korea’s many underground loan sharks so the amount continued to grow, and grow, and grow. When Gu’s attempts to evade the loan shark’s reach failed, he was killed, left on the street as a blood-soaked warning for anyone else thinking about escape. Ultimately, this is a fairly moving, gripping piece but it’s also quite uneven: inventive, arresting scenes jostle with the more stock; raw, haunting episodes interrupted by flashes of sentimentality. Translated by Soje.

Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Brazen for an ARC

This is such an interesting take on love and romance. I love the way it follows a couple from beginning to end and breaks the norm in romance novels. The only downside is that it took quite some brain cells to understand. The story is dual pov and the changes are only indicated using circles (white for Dam and black for Gu) and not linear in time. I had to start over at some point, but I do think it's worth the time it takes to understand it.

Hunger is a unique exploration of death and how we effect the lives of others around us, sometimes for good, sometimes for the worst. This will play on my mind for a while..

I’m going to start by saying this wasn’t what I thought it would be. It’s blurbed as a “cannibalistic relationship between a woman and her deceased boyfriend”, but it’s more about reflecting on their past together and highlighting the emotional impact of their doomed love story. I thought this was going to be more horror leaning, but it was very literary and kind of reminded me of Alone With You in the Ether, though much shorter and quite different tonally.

Although I enjoyed the prose, the narration was a little bit confusing as it switched perspective frequently. I’m not sure if this was just an issue with the Kindle edition* I had, but there was nothing to show who was narrating and I actually thought there were three narrators at one point. The writing was great though, and I loved the stream of consciousness style and the way it gave snapshots of their lives to piece together.

Overall this was an interesting book reflecting on an all-consuming love, with gorgeous prose that is definitely worth highlighting. Thank you to Octopus Books for the NetGalley arc!

*Edit: So, it turns out the chapters are separated on the NetGalley reader version, but on the Kindle app it all reads as one continuous chapter with no breaks to indicate the narrator change. Sadly, read it on kindle so didn’t know when the narrator changed.

From the blurb, I expected this to be weirder, darker and for the cannibalism to be more central but it’s actually a rather quiet and contemplative coming-of-age novel about love and grief.

It’s an incredibly quick read, but engaging nonetheless. I wasn’t blown away but will definitely keep an eye out for more from Choi Jin-young.

I read this on the NetGalley Shelf app, where the POV was denoted at the start of each chapter with a white circle for Dam and a black circle for Gu. Apparently this was not the case for the Kindle version, hence everyone else’s confusion!