"The photo, the crime, the dog, and the artist. I kept asking myself: is this for real? I couldn't stop wondering and couldn't stop reading either. Yun Ko-eun is such a master storyteller, and this translation immaculately reflects her style. So many disparate events are happening in this novel and yet they are all convincingly probable. In the end, I am left pondering about reality. About how we all live once before we burn."
--Bora Chung, author of Cursed Bunny

"Yun Ko-eun is back with another darkly humorous and biting satire ... The creation, commodification, and celebration of art will leave an indelible mark in readers' minds."
--Andrienne Cruz, Booklist

"Art on Fire, by turns comical and apocalyptic, is a brilliant satire of the art world, late-stage capitalism, and climate change ... [An] enjoyable romp through our current plutocratic hellscape, with Yun Ko-eun skewering the sacred cows of fine art and the oligarchs who buy it."
--Driftless Area Review

"Yun Ko-eun gloriously takes on the art world, hysterically, delectably, thoroughly exposing its gatekeepers, makers, and audiences."
--Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness

"Yun Ko-eun puts a lighted match to our present-day bonfire of the vanities, and the result is a memorably bizarre spectacle."
--Simon Morley, author of Modern Painting: A Concise History

"Yun Ko-eun's surgical satire on the age-old war between art and commerce has never felt this fresh and this relevant."
--Sean Ellis, film director

"While nature usually serves as inspiration for art, in Art of Fire it also plays a role as a barrier to the public consumption and commodification of art. A lot happens in this book with a lot of themes being explored, and it's done with humor and wit ... I am continually impressed with the seamless translation of Lizzie Buehler. I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys surrealist fiction, especially to those who want to explore more Korean translated books."
--Helen Kim Rhee, Manse

"[An] absurdist satire that skewers modern capitalist culture and the art world."
--Matt Witt, World Wide Work

Praise for The Disaster Tourist:

An Entropy Best Book of the Year
A Harper's Bazaar Best Book of the Year

"This tale of complicity and denial (reintroduced in a new English translation by Lizzie Buehler this summer) feels nauseatingly on point this year. Hurtling from a Seoul office building to a remote desert island in Southeast Asia, Yun's late-capitalist satire makes the case that the identity we find through work is almost always shaped by how we have been exploited--or how we have exploited others ... As in the real world, death in The Disaster Tourist becomes more optional the more powerful you are."
--Madeline Leung Coleman, The Atlantic

"Following a spate of recent fiction considering the strange intersection of our work and leisure lives--novels such as Ling Ma's apocalyptic satire Severance and Sayaka Murata's oddly affecting Convenience Store Woman--The Disaster Tourist offers up another fresh and sharp story about life under late capitalism ... Witty and absurd, then suspenseful, even terror-filled ... This is an entertaining eco-thriller that sets out to illuminate the way climate change is inextricably bound up with the pressures of global capitalism."
--The Guardian

"Lays bare the inherent inauthenticity of the tourist experience--especially those that purport to be beneficial, even humanitarian, for the local community--and does so in a way that will make you creepily uncomfortable about all your past travel adventures."
--Los Angeles Review of Books

"This firecracker of a novel from South Korean writer Ko-eun could not be more timely, with themes around climate tourism, activism, and the #MeToo movement ... This is a fast-paced thriller-esque story that skillfully addresses individual complicity in harm, and the morality of a fascination with disaster."
--Shondaland

"Yun Ko-eun presents a dystopian feminist ecothriller that takes on climate change, sexual assault, greed, and dark tourism. This is a unique, mysterious, and engrossing novel."
--Ms. Magazine

"South Korean author Yun's spare but provocative novel offers perceptive satire laced with disconcerting imagery ... Yun cleverly combines absurdity with legitimate horror and mounting dread. With its arresting, nightmarish island scenario, this work speaks volumes about the human cost of tourism in developing countries."
--Publishers Weekly, STARRED Review

Publisher: Scribe Us

Pub date: 2025-10-14

Length: 256 pages