City of Ash and Red

About

A man distinguished only by his talent for killing rats is sent by his extermination company to Country C — a nation descending into chaos, swept by contagious disease, and drowning in trash. Upon arrival he's detained by quarantine officials and forgotten. When he finally reaches the outside world, he learns his ex-wife has been found dead in his apartment and he's the prime suspect. Stranded in a foreign city paralyzed by fear of contamination, he must clear his name while his former identity slips further from his grasp. Pyun Hye-young writes Kafkaesque fiction where bureaucratic absurdity and existential horror are the same thing. The unnamed protagonist's disintegration mirrors the collapsing city around him — both are systems that have forgotten their original purpose. City of Ash and Red is a novel about what happens when you remove a person from every context that made them human — and watch what remains.