Please Look After Mom
— Worth the detour
About
When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo disappears in the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family launches a desperate search. But as they retrace her steps, they realize how little they knew about the woman they called Mom — her private sorrows, her sacrificed ambitions, the interior life she maintained behind decades of selfless service to a family that never thought to ask what she wanted. Kyung-Sook Shin's Man Asian Literary Prize winner is narrated in rotating perspectives — husband, daughter, son, mother herself — each revealing a different version of the same woman. The structure transforms a missing-person story into an excavation of how families construct and consume the women who hold them together. A novel that asks the question every family dreads: what if the person who gave you everything finally decided to walk away?
