A chilling Korean revenge novel, blending crime and horror, about a mother whose grief transforms her into a murderous bloodsucker, and the detective on her trail

A male victim, posing as if in prayer, burnt beyond recognition but otherwise intact. No traces of the assailant. 

Detective Jin-seon Noh is called to the scene but soon discovers this case is unlike anything she’s seen before. The man was killed with startling force and drained of his blood. Jin-seon learns that the victim had recently been accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend, and as more men turn up murdered, a pattern begins to emerge: all of these men are guilty of heinous crimes against women.

Buried underneath a mound of soil on a mountain top, Geum-hong had woken up transformed. Now her senses are vivid, she has phenomenal strength, and her appetite is deadly. The last thing she can recall of her old life is grief. Before losing consciousness, she’d been scattering the ashes of her only daughter, who was brutally murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Geum-hong has no idea how long she’s been simmering beneath the earth, in fact, the confines of linear time no longer mean much to her. All she knows is that despite her transformation, her rage remains…

As Jin-seon falls deeper into the case and more impossible details emerge, she can’t silence the question creeping into the back of her mind: would it really be right to thwart this dealer of dark justice?

Leaping between a diverse cast of female perspectives, Mothersucker is a propulsive, lacerating exploration of power and bigotry, which examines the monsters that make us and the monsters we become.

Translated by Archana Madhavan.