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A deeply moving and heartfelt story about a Korean woman who returns to Seoul to unravel the mystery of her origins, thirty-five years after she was found abandoned as a child at a train station.
Before she was named Nana by a French couple who adopted her as a child, she was Esther Pak, a girl growing up in a Korean orphanage. And before she was Esther Pak, she was Munju, a small child abandoned on the railway tracks of Cheongnyangni Station in Seoul.
Nana has no memories of the first three or four years of her life, no family records detailing the personal information of her parents, no birth certificate, or any medical records from the hospital where she was born. She was abandoned on the railway tracks at a station in Seoul, where a train conductor saved her life and took her in for a year, before taking her to an orphanage where she was eventually put up for international adoption.
Adopted by a French couple, she is now a playwright in Paris in her late thirties. The day she finds out she is pregnant with her first child, she receives an email from Seoyeong, a Korean filmmaker who wishes to make a documentary about her life. Nana accepts the offer, hoping to reconcile with her past as she prepares to become a mother herself. She travels to Seoul during the summer and stays at the filmmaker's apartment. One night, during a power outage, Nana ventures to Bokhee's Kitchen, the restaurant on the ground floor, and befriends the woman running it, who she assumes is called Bokhee. They develop a strong bond. But as Nana moves through Seoul, visiting the orphanage and the train station where she was abandoned thirty-five years ago, the woman everyone calls Bokhee has a stroke and is hospitalized-and her real name and past come to light.
Simple Heart is a powerfully moving novel that delves into the lives of women from post-war to present and touches on international adoption, the U.S. military presence, poverty and class, xenophobia and patriarchy. But above all it is about the bonds of love between women and children, and the difficult choices mothers have to make. CHO HAEJIN started her literary career through the literary magazine Munye Joongang in 2004, after receiving an MA in Korean Literature from Ewha Womans University. Since then, she has won several important literary awards in South Korea, including the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature, Yi Sang Literary Award and the Hyeongpyeong Literary Prize. Her novels are celebrated for bearing testimony to the existence and lives of those on the margins of Korean society. Her other novels include My Name Is Loh Kiwan, a film adaptation of which was released on Netflix in 2024.
JAMIE CHANG is an award-winning literary translator. Her translation of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Awards in Translated Literature. She is the recipient of the Daesan Foundation Translation Grant and a three-time recipient of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea Grant. She lives in Ontario, Canada.
Before she was named Nana by a French couple who adopted her as a child, she was Esther Pak, a girl growing up in a Korean orphanage. And before she was Esther Pak, she was Munju, a small child abandoned on the railway tracks of Cheongnyangni Station in Seoul.
Nana has no memories of the first three or four years of her life, no family records detailing the personal information of her parents, no birth certificate, or any medical records from the hospital where she was born. She was abandoned on the railway tracks at a station in Seoul, where a train conductor saved her life and took her in for a year, before taking her to an orphanage where she was eventually put up for international adoption.
Adopted by a French couple, she is now a playwright in Paris in her late thirties. The day she finds out she is pregnant with her first child, she receives an email from Seoyeong, a Korean filmmaker who wishes to make a documentary about her life. Nana accepts the offer, hoping to reconcile with her past as she prepares to become a mother herself. She travels to Seoul during the summer and stays at the filmmaker's apartment. One night, during a power outage, Nana ventures to Bokhee's Kitchen, the restaurant on the ground floor, and befriends the woman running it, who she assumes is called Bokhee. They develop a strong bond. But as Nana moves through Seoul, visiting the orphanage and the train station where she was abandoned thirty-five years ago, the woman everyone calls Bokhee has a stroke and is hospitalized-and her real name and past come to light.
Simple Heart is a powerfully moving novel that delves into the lives of women from post-war to present and touches on international adoption, the U.S. military presence, poverty and class, xenophobia and patriarchy. But above all it is about the bonds of love between women and children, and the difficult choices mothers have to make. CHO HAEJIN started her literary career through the literary magazine Munye Joongang in 2004, after receiving an MA in Korean Literature from Ewha Womans University. Since then, she has won several important literary awards in South Korea, including the Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature, Yi Sang Literary Award and the Hyeongpyeong Literary Prize. Her novels are celebrated for bearing testimony to the existence and lives of those on the margins of Korean society. Her other novels include My Name Is Loh Kiwan, a film adaptation of which was released on Netflix in 2024.
JAMIE CHANG is an award-winning literary translator. Her translation of Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Awards in Translated Literature. She is the recipient of the Daesan Foundation Translation Grant and a three-time recipient of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea Grant. She lives in Ontario, Canada.