“Ghost story, family saga, parable, feminist reimagined myth: Angela Mi Young Hur’s hugely ambitious Folklorn is a spellbinding shape-shifter of a novel that tackles questions of race, culture, and history head-on, exploring the blurry boundaries between past and present, fact and fantasy, and personal and cultural—or cosmic.” —Celeste Ng, author of Little Fires Everywhere
A New York Times Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novel of 2021 | An NPR Best Book of 2021 | Indie Next Pick May 2021
A genre-defying, continents-spanning saga of Korean myth, scientific discovery, and the abiding love that binds even the most broken of families.Elsa Park is a particle physicist at the top of her game, stationed at a neutrino observatory in the Antarctic, confident she’s put enough distance between her ambitions and the family ghosts she’s run from all her life. But it isn’t long before her childhood imaginary friend—an achingly familiar, spectral woman in the snow—comes to claim her at last.
Years ago, Elsa’s now-catatonic mother warned her that women of their line were doomed to repeat the narrative lives of their ancestors from Korean myth and legend. But Elsa also faces a more earthly fate: the mental illness and generational trauma that run in her immigrant family.
When her mother breaks her decade-long silence and tragedy strikes, Elsa must return to her childhood home in California. There, among family wrestling with their own demons, she unravels the secrets hidden in the handwritten pages of her mother’s dark stories: of women’s desire and fury; of magic suppressed, stolen, or punished; of the hunger for vengeance.
Folklorn is a wondrous and necessary exploration of the myths we inherit and those we fashion for ourselves.
A Korean-American scientist who has always been haunted by a ghostly imaginary friend, and whose mother warned that the women of their family were subject to a cyclical intergenerational curse, seeks answers in her mother's folk tales and a family history riddled with war and loss, as the fate of her ancestors closes in on her. Now in trade paperback.
"An elegant punch to the face.... beautiful and hard and hungry, full of sharp, painful observations, slicing clichés open like prickly pears and devouring their hearts." —
New York Times "[A] beautiful meditation on childhood trauma as well as an exploration into Korean heritage... a gorgeous journey into the intersection of science and myth and how our past traumas shape us – but how they need not define us." – NPR "Best Books of 2021"
"Ghost story, family saga, parable, feminist reimagined myth: Angela Mi Young Hur’s hugely ambitious
Folklorn is a spellbinding shape-shifter of a novel that tackles questions of race, culture, and history head-on, exploring the blurry boundaries between past and present, fact and fantasy, and personal and cultural—or cosmic." —Celeste Ng, bestselling author of
Little Fires Everywhere "Vivid and delectable. Angela Mi Young Hur is equally at home working in the fertile territories of myth and the fantastic as in the nuanced portrayal of a contemporary, complex family. I loved this." – Kelly Link, Pulitzer Prize finalist and National bestselling author of
Get in Trouble “In
Folklorn, Angela Mi Young Hur weaves the fantastic into the realism of a compelling family saga, creating a heartfelt novel as original as it is irresistible. Pick this up if you’re ready to not put it down.” —Mat Johnson, author of
Pym and
Loving Day “Spectacular. . . . Hur writes with virtuosity and power, weaving together the ribbons of the mythic with the complex tapestry of family and history to create a gorgeous, moving whole.” —Kat Howard, author of
An Unkindness of Magicians “
Folklorn is a work of capacious, original imagination: part supernatural mystery, part immigrant family story. Hur’s mixing and melding of genres is an inventive, elegant means of illuminating the dualities of diasporic experience, as well as a testament to the essential role of stories in understanding our identities.” —Peter Ho Davies, author of
The Fortunes and A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself “Dark, difficult, and riveting—
Folklorn gave me endless trouble, and I appreciate it.” —R. F. Kuang, Astounding Award-winning author of
The Poppy War "With enviable ambition and swagger,
Folklorn tosses us from one shimmering setting to another: Antarctic research station, Korean spa, Scandinavian island, hipster neighborhood in Stockholm, auto body shop in Southern California. Exploring our genetic and traumatic inheritances, Angela Hur weaves gorgeous Korean fables through a woman’s messy, international search for redemption and connection. This novel is brash, defiant and ultimately full of yearning." —Chia-Chia Lin, author of
The Unpassing “Haunting and spiritual and touching, and so unique. This is absolutely one to be cherished.” —“Tor.com 30 Most Anticipated Books of 2021”
“A complex meditation on intergenerational trauma…. The honest look at prickly Elsa’s internalized racism is ambitious but often brutal in its unflinching execution…. This thought-provoking work will appeal to SFF fans who like their talk of particle physics side by side with fox spirits and fairy tales.” —
Publishers Weekly "Genre-defying and emotionally unsettling, it is a book that refuses to stay in whatever category the reader wants to put it.... Well worth the effort."
—Locus 
