Grandma

A profound new novel from one of Asia’s greatest living writers, Grandma is a sweeping historical and ecological epic that spans more than six centuries.

At its heart stands a single plane tree. Born from a seed carried by a bird that dies at the mouth of a river, the tree survives wars, upheavals, and transformations of the land, growing into a presence revered by generations as ‘Grandma’. Around its roots unfold the lives of monks, villagers, rebels, and wanderers, their stories layered through time like the rings of the tree itself.

Moving fluidly between human history and the wider world of living things, Grandma expands the scope of the historical novel into a profound meditation on life, death, memory, and endurance. From the flutter of an insect’s wings to the devastation of the Korean peninsula, Hwang Sok-yong evokes a vast, breathing world in which human struggle is inseparable from the fate of nature.

Written with the author’s trademark narrative power and moral intensity, this novel speaks directly to our present moment of ecological crisis, asking how humanity might rediscover its place within the cycles of the living earth. Grandma is both an elegy for what is disappearing and a testament to the resilience of life itself.