We recommend One Hundred Shadows to all dreamers, who want to escape from reality and be transported to Seoul of old electronic shops and narrow streets, walks after dusk and playing badminton in the dark. Hwang’s book is a perfect contemporary novel that experiments with language and construction. It’s like an endearing and yet disturbing dream.
But One Hundred Shadows is also a book of social issues – the protagonists live near an old electronic market, place meant to be soon demolished. The specter of demolition hangs heavy in the air like a dark shadow. Hwang herself was active in protests against demolishing two such areas in Seoul: Yongsan and Sewoon. She loudly protests against calling such places “slums”. “We call a place a ‘slum’ only because someone has planned a demolition, and the awareness that it is someone’s place of residence, someone’s house, complicates the demolition” – she said in an interview for “Korean Literature Now”.
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