The latest addition to my website is Choi Jin-young‘s 해가 지는 곳으로 (To the Warm Horizon). This is the first full-blown pandemic novel I have read since covid but do not let that put you off as it is very good novel, first published in 2017. We follow a major pandemic – people often die within an hour of contracting it – and its effect on a few groups of people. In all cases the people flee Korea and end up in Russia, not entirely sure of where they are going but just going. It soon becomes apparent that the biggest problem is not the pandemic but the behaviour of people, men in particular, as brutal violence, rape and random killings are the norm, even by men who would have behaved responsibly pre-pandemic. Indeed, the only love that seems to work is romantic love, not involving men.