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A Novel
by Cho Haejin
In this moving exploration of dual identities reminiscent of Past Lives, a Korean writer's pregnancy raises questions about her own childhood abandonment.
Nana, a Korean playwright, was adopted as a child by a French couple. Before she was Nana, she was Esther Pak, a girl growing up in a Korean orphanage. And before she was Esther Pak, she was Munju, an infant abandoned on the railway tracks of Cheongnyangni station in Seoul.
Pregnant with the child of her ex-boyfriend, Nana receives a request from a Korean filmmaker who wishes to make a documentary about her life. Following a sudden compulsion to learn more about her own roots, she heads to Seoul as she prepares to bring a new life into the world. There, through unexpected encounters, the dark threads of her memory gradually begin to unravel.
Simple Heart delves into profound questions about identity and belonging, with a focus on family connections and motherhood that recalls Kyung-Sook Shin's Please Look After Mom. It also shines a necessary light on issues such as international adoption and the historic US military presence in Korea.
"[An] intricate, touching novel…The tone is lyrical and at times mystical…poignant." —Foreword Reviews
"A stirring portrait of a young Korean French adoptee who, on the precipice of motherhood, is compelled to reach back into her past to search for her origins and the meaning of her Korean given name. A wise and elegant novel that explores belonging, memory, and the heartbreaking, complex history of international adoption in Korea with tenderness and grace." —Gina Chung, author of Sea Change and Green Frog
"As much a portrait of the adoptee experience as a testament to 'other mothers' and chosen family, Simple Heart is by no means a simple story. In tracing an adoptee's search for those who once cared for her, it exposes the ways militarism, racism, and patriarchy dismantle even the most tender bonds. In the end, we are led to a universal truth: that it is our care for others that gives this fleeting life meaning. Profound and moving, this short novel is not one I will easily forget." —Hannah Michell, author of Excavations
"What does it mean to belong—to a place, to a name, to yourself? Simple Heart is an extraordinary novel, written with unsparing clarity and luminous tenderness. Cho Haejin bears witness to lives marked by abandonment and silence, yet sustained by the smallest acts of kindness. The result is storytelling at once devastating and consoling—unsettling and unforgettable in its revelations about what it means to live on—and to belong. Deeply resonant. Utterly moving." —Yeji Y. Ham, author of The Invisible Hotel
This information about Simple Heart was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Cho Haejin was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1976. After earning a master's degree in Korean literature, she began her writing career in 2004 with the literary magazine Munye Joongang. Since then, her work has been recognized as testament to the existence and lives of those on the margins of Korean society and those forgotten by history, and have won several prominent literary awards in Korea, including the Shin Dong-yup Literary Award, Young Writer's Award, Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award, Hyungpyeong Literary Award, and Dong-in Literary Award. Simple Heart was the winner of both the Daesan Literary Award, a leading literary award in Korea, and the Kim Man-jung Literary Award, and has been published in eight countries. Her other novels include I Met Loh Kiwan, which was adapted to film under the title My Name is Loh Kiwan and released on Netflix in 2024.
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