Hardcover | 176 pagesA fierce international bestseller that launched Koreas new feminist movement,Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982follows one womans psychic deterioration in the face of rigid misogyny.

Truly, flawlessly, completely, she became that person.

In a small, tidy apartment on the outskirts of the frenzied metropolis of Seoul lives Kim Jiyoung. A thirtysomething-year-old millennial everywoman, she has recently left her white-collar desk jobin order to care for her newborn daughter full-timeas so many Korean women are expected to do. But she quickly begins to exhibit strange symptoms that alarm her husband, parents, and in-laws: Jiyoung impersonates the voices of other womenalive and even dead, both known and unknown to her. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her discomfited husband sends her to a male psychiatrist.

In a chilling, eerily truncated third-person voice, Jiyoungs entire life is recounted to the psychiatrista narrative infused with disparate elements of frustration, perseverance, and submission. Born in 1982 and given the most common name for Korean baby girls, Jiyoung quickly becomes the unfavored sister to her princeling little brother. Always, her behavior is policed by the male figures around herfrom the elementary school teachers who enforce strict uniforms for girls, to the coworkers who install a hidden camera in the womens restroom and post their photos online. In her fathers eyes, it is Jiyoungs fault that men harass her late at night; in her husbands eyes, it is Jiyoungs duty to forsake her career to take care of him and their childto put them first.

Jiyoungs painfully common life is juxtaposed against a backdrop of an advancing Korea, as it abandons family planning birth control policies and passes new legislation against gender discrimination. But can her doctor flawlessly, completely cure her, or even discover what truly ails her?

Rendered in minimalist yet lacerating prose,Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982sits at the center of our global #MeToo movement and announces the arrival of writer of international significance.