VOL.96/2026.07

Special Project

 

Book Recommendations for the Summer Vacation by Critics across Generations

 

 

2026.07

 

 

For our July issue's Special Project, we would like to recommend Korean books that are perfect to read during the upcoming holiday season, handpicked by critics representing different generations. We have selected books that will allow you to spend your vacation immersed in distinctly unique themes, ranging from deep contemplations on life, mystery and horror, to the absolute absorption found in theater and plays. We hope your vacation with these books will be a cool, chilling, or deeply captivating retreat.

 

 

 

 

The 20s Perspective – Lee Sollim, Cultural Critic

 

“If You Want to Read the Most Tender Apocalypse This Summer”

 

 

When thinking of “summer vacation,” one cannot help but recall cool science fiction, and when it comes to “Korean SF,” the name Cheon Seon-ran naturally springs to mind. Author Cheon Seon-ran, who has built a solid domestic and international fandom with brilliant novels such as A Thousand Blues and The Mower, has returned with a zombie story.

 

Launching with a playful recommendation from actor Park Jung-min, who asked, “Cheon Seon-ran, just what kind of love have you been practicing?”, Where No One Comes is Cheon Seon-ran’s second linked novel collection. This book boasts a rather unique history. It is a trilogy completed on the foundation of her early-career short stories “Can You Hear My Voice” (2019) and “Do You Remember My Breathing” (2020), along with the novella “Do You Know Us” (2025), which expanded that very universe. In essence, a world the author harbored for a long time has crystallized into a single cohesive masterpiece over the span of six years.

 

The overarching subject matter binding the book is the “zombie.” A world ravaged by a zombie virus, a humanity on the brink of extinction, and desperate choices made for survival. At first glance, it may seem like a familiar apocalypse, but Cheon Seon-ran’s focus does not rest on the disaster itself. What she has long written about is the way existence beyond the borders understands and cares for one another. The author, who has explored the possibilities of coexistence by navigating between robots and humans, humans and animals, and this world and the next, summons zombies this time around.

 

Cheon notes that she has frequently introduced entities akin to zombies in her past fiction, stating, “Now, I am finally ready to write my own zombie story.” The resulting outcome is a zombie narrative far more tender and unfamiliar than expected. The three pieces are set against entirely different coordinates of time and space: a disaster initiating inside a space migration vessel, people living and caring for one another on an Earth post-extinction, and a world where memories and emotions linger even after humanity has vanished. Each narrative is knit together by loose connections, questioning just how far the desire to save someone can lead us. Cheon’s zombies are never cleanly defined as mere “objects of terror.” Rather than frightening, they are heartbreaking; rather than alien, they are sorrowful. These entities, who were once human, remember and recognize those they love, and thus sometimes struggle desperately not to cause them harm.

 

In Cheon’s fiction, the critical point has always been the possibility of coexistence rather than survival itself. If A Thousand Blues explored the meaning of care through the relationship between human and robot, Where No One Comes borrows the genre of the zombie apocalypse to speak on the matters of love and mourning. Therefore, the disaster in this novel is nothing more than a backdrop. What the author displays to the very end is the heart that remains even after ruin, and the existences that simply refuse to give up on one another.

 

Above all, Cheon Seon-ran is an exceptional author when it comes to crafting scenes. Ruined cities, the corridors of spaceships, and the landscapes of unfamiliar planets are so vivid that they paint themselves right before the reader’s eyes. This is precisely why the book reads at a brisk pace while each scene leaves a long-lasting residue in the heart. Vacation reading is often compared to a journey to an unfamiliar world, and if so, Where No One Comes serves as a magnificent destination for that journey. It is a perfect novel to unfold when you wish to step away from reality for a moment, yet ultimately refuse to let go of your faith in humanity.

 

 

 

 

 

The 30s Perspective – Maeng Junhyuk, Publishing Editor

 

“A Chilling Awakening”

 

 

It was when I read Run, Daddy, Run that I first came to love Kim Ae-ran’s short stories. The reason I cherished every single story in that book was likely because my own youth in my twenties overlapped with them. The stories were sad yet funny; the characters never explained their lives at length as a tragedy, yet once I finished reading, it was a hilarious tragedy. I loved that emotional texture, and I felt she expressed chilly themes with an unhideable, burning heart. Those stories did not comfort life, but they seemed to demonstrate an alternative posture for enduring it.

 

The characters in I Said Goodbye have aged since then. Rather than youth who have just stepped into society, they are people who have become slightly stained while creating and defending their own places in the world. They think about houses and money, nursing their parents, retirement, and their positions within the workplace. In their youth, they wanted to protect “people,” but now they believe that they must protect their “property” in order to protect people. They sometimes view others’ desires as greed while labeling their own desires as survival. They know that such a mindset is shameful, yet they cannot give up on those desires either.

 

In the short story titled “A Good Neighbor,” the following passage appears:

 

 

After reading the book, I attended a book club meeting, and we discussed this particular passage for a long time. We talked about how, before we knew it, our lives seemed to be divided into just two kinds: a “good life” and a “well-off life.” Consequently, it feels as though people are split into only two archetypes: those who agonize over “what constitutes a good life” and those who stress over “how to achieve success.” Because these two types of people possess completely different worldviews, one seems to view the world through the lens of “values” alone, while the other views it solely through “interests.” It feels as if the two are gradually becoming worlds that can never meet.

 

Amid this chilly realization, the author Kim Ae-ran still offers neither comfort, nor right answers, nor anything of the sort. She merely shows that this is how people are living right now, gazing upon them with a slightly compassionate eye.

 

 

 

 

 

The 40s Perspective – Kim Mihyang, Publishing Critic

 

 

Summer is the perfect season for reading mystery and horror. Unfamiliar spaces, unpredictable events, and a narrative tension held tight until the very end offer a special pleasure unique to holiday reading. In this sense, Lee Do-hae’s No More Nightmare is a noteworthy piece of Korean YA literature to look out for this summer.

 

The novel begins as Aki, a seventeen-year-old apprentice copyist working at “No More Nightmare”—a suspicious shop that purchases haunted objects and cursed artifacts—sets out to find four missing high school students. The place where the children vanished is a defunct escape room cafe. However, this is no mere recreational space; it is an unknown domain constructed by supernatural aberrations to lure humans. In each room, mysterious rules exist, and violating them causes one to lose memories or become unable to see the exit. Should they fail in the final room, a continuous infinite loop awaits, dragging them back to the very beginning.

 

The greatest charm of this work lies in its exquisite combination of the familiar and the unfamiliar. Escape rooms are a globally recognized play culture. The structure of searching for clues, decoding rules, and attempting an escape within a restricted space is effortlessly understood across borders. No More Nightmare adds the unique tension of “rule creepypasta” on top of this universal game structure. Rather than fighting monsters, readers must interpret rules and find hidden meanings, experiencing a high level of immersion in the process.

 

Yet, this work does not merely stop at being a simple horror novel. While the monsters within the story manipulate human memories and stimulate fear, the novel ultimately shines its spotlight on the human heart rather than the monsters themselves. The friends featured in the book believe they know each other well, but they remain unaware of the wounds and anxieties their peers keep hidden. Someone conceals their poverty, while another cannot voice their struggles. The silence they believed to be a consideration for the other person instead breeds misunderstanding and prejudice, eventually turning into yet another rule that traps them inside the room.

 

Consequently, the domain created by monsters is not the only thing the characters must escape. Breaking free from the assumptions and misunderstandings about others—things they firmly believed they knew—also becomes a crucial task. While this theme stems from the reality of Korean youth, it is simultaneously a universal story that can resonate anywhere in the world. This is because friendship, a sense of belonging, prejudice, and the understanding of others are experiences of growth shared beyond cultures and languages.

 

Recently, Korean content has been connecting with global readers and viewers through occult, thriller, and survival genres. No More Nightmare is a noteworthy work positioned squarely within that trajectory. By combining the familiar format of an escape room game, the suspense of having to survive by decoding rules, and a coming-of-age narrative centered on relationships and empathy, it beautifully demonstrates how Korean young adult literature reinterprets the issues of growth through genre imagination.

 

 

 

 

 

The 50s Perspective – Jang Dongseok, Literary Critic

 

 

The summer heat has arrived without fail. Some choose to fight fire with fire, while others constantly seek out ice-cold things to defeat the sweltering weather. Yet, when all is said and done, perhaps the absolute best way to beat the heat is through “immersion.” If you pour your heart and soul into something, whatever it may be, you can escape the midsummer heat, if only for a brief moment. This summer, I have chosen “theater” as my method of immersive escape. When I tightly press every single line and every single gesture of the actors on stage into my heart—actions meant to make the production shine—the summer heat suddenly becomes nothing at all. Reading this book before heading to the theater would be the ultimate icing on the cake: This Is Theater in Times Like These by performance critic and author Choi Yeo-jung.

 

With smartphones held in the hands of everyone across the globe, broadcasting all kinds of sensational and violent content, theater might seem on the verge of disappearing soon. However, the author notes: “While advancements in technology often predict the demise of theater, others declare that this ancient art form, invented by humanity, is the very fortress that will survive until the final moment of the world’s end.” The author’s emphasis, of course, is firmly placed on being that fortress surviving until the final moment. The first piece chosen by such an author is Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.” Beginning with “Father,” a Korean adaptation starring the veteran actor Lee Soon-jae who passed away late year, and moving through the 1985 CBS television adaptation as well as the production by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the author travels far and wide to explain why this work remains a classic of our time. Willy, who became a shabby salesman unable to sell a single item after the Great Depression, might just be the embodiment of the lives of fathers across all generations.

 

Before marriage, she lived as her father’s doll; after marriage, she lived as her husband’s doll. Introducing Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” which captures Nora’s anguish, the author brings up Na Hye-sok. As South Korea’s first female Western-style painter, Na Hye-sok was an “eternal modern woman who denied what was forbidden” and the “Nora of Korea who refused to be a doll.” In the early 20th century, Na cried out for the invalidity of marriage and the rationality of cohabitation, while criticizing a society that debated a woman’s chastity. Coincidentally, the book Na Hye-sok loved most was indeed “A Doll’s House.” First introduced to local audiences through a performance by the Joseon Actor School in 1925, this work has been cherished by domestic theatergoers for a long time. However, Henrik Ibsen looked beyond women’s liberation to focus more on the discovery of humanity. On his 70th birthday celebration, he is said to have stated: “I have not coded for the women’s liberation movement. I am a poet, not a social philosopher. My duty as a playwright is the broad description of humanity.”

 

In addition to these masterpieces, the author offers an intimate look inside and outside works that will forever remain in theater history, such as Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” Euripides’ “Medea,” Peter Shaffer’s “Equus,” and Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot.” If you have no proper way to escape the summer heat, you should head straight to a theater right now. My heart earnestly hopes that theater, which has been experiencing a prolonged downturn, will vividly come back to life this summer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Written by Lee Sollim (Publishing Editor)

As an editor, she contemplates books that will stand the test of time, while as a critic, she keeps a keen eye on new releases that demand to be read in the here and now. She is also a reader who dreams of a day where she can step aside from professional concerns to simply read to her heart’s content, secretly hoping to one day find herself accidentally locked inside a library.

 

Written by Maeng Junhyuk (Book Editor)

Rather than aiming to craft a polished review or a perfect introduction, my true hope is to accurately convey the ‘code’ shared by myself and the ‘us’ out there somewhere. As a South Korean reader in my thirties who loves literature, I seek to carefully give voice to a part of that sensibility.

 

Written by Kim Mihyang (Book Critic·Essayist, IT Service Planner)

She worked as a publishing editor for thirteen years, spending three years on books and ten years planning and editing magazines. She is the author of the essay Mother Said She Was Not Happy, and co-authored Key Words of the Korean Publishing Industry 2010-2019, What is Film?, and Goods Caution. Having served as a Creative Director at a tech company, she is currently designing, interpreting, and recording the world as a service planner and storyteller.

 

Written by Jang Dongseok (Book Critic)

He is a dedicated reader and writer. Captivated by the vast and profound world of literature, he spends every spare moment reading and contemplating how books resonate with our society. He is currently striving to transform books, the infinite source of all content, into diverse cultural formats. His published works include The Living Library, The Rebirth of Forbidden Books, The Birth of Different Thoughts, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms: A Story Renewed After a Thousand Years, and Meeting World Classics for the First Time: A Guide for Teens.