Hunger by Choi Jin-young: A brutal, unforgettable descent into love, poverty, and desperation

There are books that entertain, and then there are books that settle somewhere in your body and refuse to move—Hunger by Choi Jin-young is firmly the latter, a slim novel that opens with a shocking act and only grows more unsettling from there. If the premise alone—compared to Parasite as a kind of dark, romantic counterpoint—sounds extreme, the reality is even harsher. This is, at its core, a tale of absolute misery. And it’s almost a relief that the book is so brief, because lingering in its world for too long would be difficult to bear.

The story begins with Gu’s death, though the cause is initially unknown. Dam, his lifelong counterpart in a relationship defined by separation and reunion, is inconsolable. The idea of losing him—not just emotionally, but physically through burial or cremation—is unbearable. So she makes a choice that is as horrifying as it is, in her mind, logical: she will consume him, ensuring they are never apart again.

It’s a premise that could easily veer into grotesque territory, but Choi Jin-young resists that impulse. The novel is far less concerned with the act itself than with the lives that led to it. Through alternating perspectives—Dam among the living, Gu observing from beyond—we see the long, grinding accumulation of hardship that shapes them.

Gu inherits a life already weighted with his parents’ debts, much of it owed to predatory loan sharks. Dam, after losing the last of her family—her beloved aunt—is left utterly alone. When they find each other again, it feels less like romance and more like survival. Together, they scrape out an existence defined by poverty, fear, and constant movement, always one step ahead of those who would collect what they owe.

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Calling this a love story doesn’t feel quite right. If anything, Hunger reads as a desperation story—a portrait of two people whose lives were circumscribed before they ever had a chance to choose them. They cling to each other not out of idealized romance, but because there is nothing else to hold onto. Even that proves fragile.

What makes the novel so effective—and so difficult—is its refusal to soften any of this. There’s no comforting narrative arc, no sense that things might turn out differently if only the characters tried harder. The world they inhabit is one where systems—economic, social, even familial—tighten like a vise. By the time Dam makes her final, unthinkable decision, it feels less like a shocking twist and more like an inevitability.

This is not a book you read for enjoyment. It’s uncomfortable, often bleak, and filled with a creeping sense of dread. But it is also deeply purposeful. In telling Gu and Dam’s story, Choi Jin-young forces a confrontation with the invisible lives around us—the people ground down by circumstances they didn’t choose, carrying burdens they didn’t create.

There’s an unsettling clarity to the novel’s worldview: no one is inherently better than anyone else. We are shaped, limited, and often trapped by the conditions of our birth. Hunger doesn’t offer solutions or redemption, but it does demand that we look closer, and perhaps more honestly, at the world we move through so easily.

And that may be the most disturbing part of all.

Hunger releases May 12, 2026. If you’ve read it—or if you’re planning to—what did you make of Dam’s final choice? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

An advance reader copy of this book (ARC) was provided to me by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Related Content

• Hunger by Choi Jin-young: Love, cannibalism and contemporary Korea (Art Review)
• In Hunger, love so deep it crosses death — and consumes what’s left behind (The Korea Herald)
• In One Long Breath: An interview with Choi Jin-young (Words Without Borders)
• To The Warm Horizon by Choi Jin-Young (Winston’s Dad’s Blog)

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