Readers who have ever straddled multiple countries and/or cultures, readers who have endured and adjusted to peripatetic relocations, will find deep, aching resonance with Jinwoo Park's enthralling debut, Oxford Soju Club. Park spotlights diaspora, heritage, family, self-knowledge--all commingled into a lightning-paced spy thriller with substantial body count.
Park's cast converges in Oxford, England. That the main players are all initially introduced with descriptions rather than names suggests identities are mutable, especially amid political and historical (dis)loyalties. The Northerners are two: legendary North Korean spymaster Doha Kim and his protégé Yohan Kim. The Southerner is Jihoon Lim, an immigrant from Seoul, now the proprietor of Soju Club, Oxford's only Korean restaurant. The American is Yunah Choi, a CIA agent assigned to break up a North Korean cell.
Park moves fluidly, effortlessly between Oxford in the present and all the various pasts that had to happen to produce this intricate, lethal convergence. He expertly connects and comforts, severs and shocks, all the while navigating revelatory twists and turns. --Terry Hong