Choi Jin-Young’s novel To the Warm Horizon, translated by Alina Kolbiagina, presents a storyline in which a group of people is forced to flee their homes by a deadly virus. It is a familiar type of story to Russian readers not only because of Stephen King and other widely translated Western writers who produce such novels, but also thanks to the success of Russian writer Yana Vagner’s To the Lake in 2011. But this Korean post-apocalyptic story is a different cup of tea: while King’s and Vagner’s narratives are more fast-paced, this book requires a much slower reading. This story serves as a reflection, almost a diary, of the characters’ attempts to analyse their pasts at a moment of tragedy; a soul-searching tale of what their lives could have been like, had they made different choices.

     The book consists of a series of monologues where Dori, Jina, Ryu, and Gunji invite us into their inner worlds as they escape from their native Korea to Russia  while the pandemic is taking over the world. In the foreword of the book, Choi says that she deliberately wanted to place the characters in “the most enormous country on the planet,” and that she wanted them “to hold a flag, so even from the sky it would signal that ‘a human being is right here, in this place!’” It seems Choi wants us to study and observe the individual at a time of crisis—and the landscape here plays the part of a vast space that helps bring out the feeling of loneliness. She moves characters from a densely populated place into this huge “sandbox” to have a closer look at what they would do, and to reflect on existential identity and the consequences of life choices. 

     At first glance, the focus in the book is on the pandemic and its aftermath—poverty, famine, crime, and chaos—but these actually serve as the backdrop for the internal transition the characters go through. Each of them analyses their past and realises how loveless their lives have been. Ryu reflects on how she used to neglect her own needs (“I always wore thin jackets into the winter until I got ill, because I never had time to take my warm winter coat to the dry cleaners.”). Having never looked after herself and having never felt loved (“Do we actually know anything about love?”), she regrets marrying a man who doesn’t show any affection or interest towards her. 

     The voices in Choi’s book are predominantly female, and her heroines are courageous and self-sacrificing, valuing the lives of their loved ones over their own. Men, on the other hand, are often either indecisive or violent: Dan, Ryu’s husband, cries and asks her to return to Korea because he is scared; Dori’s father joins a gang of marauders and bandits to survive, explaining that this is the only way he can save Dori’s life; Jina’s father hits Dori, blaming her for the deaths of several family members, and Jina’s uncle sexually assaults her. The only exception is Gunji, an orphaned boy from Jina’s village who later becomes a compassionate young man. He protects Dori from Jina’s family but ends up being disowned.

     The characters that have a chance at being saved are the ones who care about others and who protect their loved ones. Their desire to keep running further away from the disaster—“there, over the horizon, where the sun sets”—is fuelled by their ability to love. Jina, Dori, Ryu, Gunji, and even Miso, Dori’s little sister, dream of making their loved ones happy. Ryu, having told her husband that she doesn’t love him, realises that his survival is more important to her than the words she said, which actually held no meaning. Gunji, having survived losses and hardship at such a young age, simply dreams of catching fish, collecting fruit, and giving them to the person he loves. Wanting to make someone happy is present even at a subconscious level. Without knowing its meaning, Dori keeps humming a song that she heard on the radio—“Ma rendi pur contento” which means “Only make her happy.” Choi Jin-Young offers us the hope that love will prevail and humanity will survive, despite the disasters. Otherwise, why would she end the novel with the words, “I love you”?

Maria Wiltshire

Translator and Russian language tutor