2022 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Set in the months leading up to the 2018 nuclear missile false alarm, a Korean American family living in Hawai'i faces the fallout of their eldest son's attempt to run across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea in this "fresh, inventive, and at times, hilarious novel" (Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of The Descendants)
Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawaiʻi seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho’s Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college and working for her parents, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying—and failing—to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales.
No one knows that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his lost grandfather, who feverishly wishes to cross the divide and find the family he left behind in the north. As Jacob is detained by the South Korean government, Mr. and Mrs. Cho fear their son won’t ever be able to return home, and Grace gets more and more stoned as she negotiates her family’s undoing. Struggling with what they don’t know about themselves and one another, the Chos must confront the separations that have endured in their family for decades.
Set in the months leading up to the 2018 false missile alert in Hawaiʻi, Joseph Han’s profoundly funny and strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited and reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget and who we remember.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Set in the months leading up to the 2018 nuclear missile false alarm, a Korean American family living in Hawai'i faces the fallout of their eldest son's attempt to run across the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea in this "fresh, inventive, and at times, hilarious novel" (Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of The Descendants)
Things are looking up for Mr. and Mrs. Cho. Their dream of franchising their Korean plate lunch restaurants across Hawaiʻi seems within reach after a visit from Guy Fieri boosts the profile of Cho’s Delicatessen. Their daughter, Grace, is busy finishing her senior year of college and working for her parents, while her older brother, Jacob, just moved to Seoul to teach English. But when a viral video shows Jacob trying—and failing—to cross the Korean demilitarized zone, nothing can protect the family from suspicion and the restaurant from waning sales.
No one knows that Jacob has been possessed by the ghost of his lost grandfather, who feverishly wishes to cross the divide and find the family he left behind in the north. As Jacob is detained by the South Korean government, Mr. and Mrs. Cho fear their son won’t ever be able to return home, and Grace gets more and more stoned as she negotiates her family’s undoing. Struggling with what they don’t know about themselves and one another, the Chos must confront the separations that have endured in their family for decades.
Set in the months leading up to the 2018 false missile alert in Hawaiʻi, Joseph Han’s profoundly funny and strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited and reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget and who we remember.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Joseph Han's Nuclear Family is a moving exploration of the losses we inherit, the continual violence of borders, and the embodiedness of history. He shows us that what is so powerful and resurrective about mythmaking is not that it provides an escape from our world but that it allows us to see the deeper truths of it, to give agency to the buried, and to shape possibility across space and time and generations. Han writes with incredible empathy for the living and the dead, subverting borders of all kinds to illuminate intergenerational dynamics, labor, and the living marrow of memory." - K-Ming Chang
"One of the most original novels I've read in the last decade. Nuclear Family imagines a story of the lives of our Korean ancestors in the present tense, their ghost life as full of urgency, politics, and complication as our own. How far does the separation at the thirty-eighth parallel go?, Han asks. All the way into the land of spirit, a wound for the living and the dead." - Alexander Chee
"Han will draw you in with his dry, slacker humor, his playful references to weed and Guy Fieri, but he will keep you reading with his heartfelt determination to tell a family saga that holds nothing back. Nuclear Family is about borders, both imposed and self-created, the family history and trauma we try to outrun, what happens when we inevitably fail to. A debut filled with ghosts that manages to still be so very alive." - Jean Kyoung Frazier
"Nuclear Family manages to capture Hawai?i, North and South Korea, Guy Fieri and family-run delicatessens, teenage gloom, the weight of our family and ancestors, and settle them all onto an appetizing plate. A fresh, inventive, and at times, hilarious novel." - Kaui Hart Hemmings
"A haunting, tender, potent, and frequently very funny testament to the pull of history and the tenacity of ghosts. Spellbinding and original, Nuclear Family is a novel to hold close." - R O Kwon
"Joseph Han is a new voice that enriches the landscape of American literature. Nuclear Family continually surprises and moves with a grace and breadth beyond most debut novels. It boldly, compassionately reimagines the thirty-eighth parallel dividing North and South Korea and the lives of immigrant families with an innovative plot that is entirely Han's own." - Krys Lee
"Nuclear Family is a world unto itself: Joseph Han's novel is heartfelt and propulsive, immersing readers in a narrative whose questions of family, borders, queerness, and forgiveness constantly surprises and astounds. Han's prose is remarkable--both deadpan and compassionate--juggling the stories that we're told with the ones we seek to tell ourselves. Nuclear Family is a singular work, and Han's writing is truly special." - Bryan Washington
"One of the most original novels I've read in the last decade. Nuclear Family imagines a story of the lives of our Korean ancestors in the present tense, their ghost life as full of urgency, politics, and complication as our own. How far does the separation at the thirty-eighth parallel go?, Han asks. All the way into the land of spirit, a wound for the living and the dead." - Alexander Chee
"Han will draw you in with his dry, slacker humor, his playful references to weed and Guy Fieri, but he will keep you reading with his heartfelt determination to tell a family saga that holds nothing back. Nuclear Family is about borders, both imposed and self-created, the family history and trauma we try to outrun, what happens when we inevitably fail to. A debut filled with ghosts that manages to still be so very alive." - Jean Kyoung Frazier
"Nuclear Family manages to capture Hawai?i, North and South Korea, Guy Fieri and family-run delicatessens, teenage gloom, the weight of our family and ancestors, and settle them all onto an appetizing plate. A fresh, inventive, and at times, hilarious novel." - Kaui Hart Hemmings
"A haunting, tender, potent, and frequently very funny testament to the pull of history and the tenacity of ghosts. Spellbinding and original, Nuclear Family is a novel to hold close." - R O Kwon
"Joseph Han is a new voice that enriches the landscape of American literature. Nuclear Family continually surprises and moves with a grace and breadth beyond most debut novels. It boldly, compassionately reimagines the thirty-eighth parallel dividing North and South Korea and the lives of immigrant families with an innovative plot that is entirely Han's own." - Krys Lee
"Nuclear Family is a world unto itself: Joseph Han's novel is heartfelt and propulsive, immersing readers in a narrative whose questions of family, borders, queerness, and forgiveness constantly surprises and astounds. Han's prose is remarkable--both deadpan and compassionate--juggling the stories that we're told with the ones we seek to tell ourselves. Nuclear Family is a singular work, and Han's writing is truly special." - Bryan Washington
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