The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness by Kyung-Sook Shin is a semi-autobiographical novel about a Korean girl who grows up poor in the countryside and is sent to Seoul when she is 16 to live in a single room with her older brother and cousin and work long hours in a factory. Eventually she continues school and becomes a writer. However, the four years spent working at the factory and living in that single room were so traumatic for her, she blocks them out until she is in her thirties and finally decides to look back on that time and write about it.

We are much the richer for her effort. Beautifully written, this is a look into a world most readers know little about. It’s also a reflection on life and art and literature and what it means to be a writer. A worthwhile read.