b, Book, and Me

“At turns raw & piercing, dreamy & surreal, Kim’s latest import…is a pressing indictment of today’s too-often onerous transition toward uncertain adulthood.” —Booklist, Starred Review

“b, Book, & Me uses the tumult of teenage thinking & feeling to tell a story that readers of every age will savor… It accomplishes more in its 134 pages than many novels double & triple its size.” — John Francisconi, Bank Square Books (Mystic, Connecticut)

“... the original title 나b책 translates as “Butterfly Book” in Korean. The story is about three people: 나(me), b, and 책(book). So the title has a double meaning & that’s how I like it because I’m addicted to puns.” — Author Kim Sagwa

Best friends b & Rang are all each other have. Their parents are absent, their teachers avert their eyes when they walk by. Everyone else in town acts like they live in Seoul even though it’s painfully obvious they don’t. When Rang begins to be bullied horribly by the boys in baseball hats, b fends them off. But one day Rang unintentionally tells the whole class about b’s dying sister & how her family is poor, & each of them finds herself desperately alone. The only place they can reclaim themselves, & perhaps each other, is beyond the part of town where lunatics live—the End.

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Kim Sagwa is one of South Korea’s most acclaimed emerging writers. She is the author of several novels, story collections, & works of nonfiction, & has been shortlisted for several major South Korean awards, including the Munji Prize & the Young Writers Award. Kim contributes columns to two major Seoul newspapers, and she co-translated John Freeman's book How to Read a Novelist into Korean.