A desultory libertine mourns a failed relationship over the course of two harsh winters in this unprecedented portrait of millennials living in Seoul.

The time is roughly now and Kai, a white-collar worker, has just been abandoned by his longtime lover. Follow him through the city’s alleyways as he reels from this sudden departure. Accompany him up snowy mountains where he contemplates ending his own life. That mourning can be both a sensuous and revelatory art is epitomized in the paths that Kai crosses and the lives he alters for better or worse.

Kai is not the only one feeling disoriented and aimless these days. Those in his inner circle similarly experience personal crises as they go through their thirties in a nation simmering with class and generational tensions, as well as the specter of new and old wars. Doing for Seoul what Kathy Acker does for New York City and Virginie Despentes for Paris, Ery Shin evokes contemporary Seoul in all of its glory and turmoil. Phantasmagorical, melancholic, and daringly irreverent, Spring on the Peninsula is a poignant debut novel and a meditation on modern life in a city beset by North Korea’s shadow.