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No. 9 is in trouble. His son’s college tuition is coming due, his wife needs surgery after taking double shifts at a grocery store, the apartment building they bought as a nest egg is falling apart, and the company he helped build is trying to force him into early retirement. When he refuses, the mid-level IT man is demoted to sales and given increasingly impossible tasks. As his salary dwindles and the humiliations mount, No. 9 must decide where his loyalties lie. If he fights back, how far will the company go to stop him?
With her urgent and timely novel, award-winning Korean author Kim Hye-jin questions how long we can endure a corrupt system. In a rigged game, is there an alternative to playing out your hand?
“Employee No. 9 is unflinching in its raw depiction of the way capitalism can shrink a life down to an endless parade of small humiliations. With writing as unrelenting and controlled as the invisible company at the center of this novel, Kim shows us the horror of living in a broken world that forces us to choose the false promise of agency over our dignity. I couldn’t look away.”
— Ling Ling Huang, author of Immaculate Conception and Natural Beauty
“Kim Hye-jin’s deft and unsparing portrayal of late-stage capitalism in Korea takes on an almost Beckettian flair in its exploration of the decent, unremarkable man caught in the gears of the machine with seemingly no way out.”
— Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of Somebody’s Daughter and The Evening Hero
“Author Kim Hye-jin and translator Jamie Chang bring an extraordinary work of literature in Employee No. 9. A portrait of labor, identity, and desperation in modern corporate life, the novel explores a world shaped by inequality and the erosion of workers’ rights. Employee No. 9 captures a growing global unease surrounding labor and survival while remaining deeply rooted in the realities of contemporary Korean society.”
— E. J. Koh, author of The Liberators and The Magical Language of Others
“A searing critique of the workplace culture in an ultra-modern society like South Korea, where the race for higher profits trumps human dignity. Its powerful narrative reverberates long after the last page.”
— Wondra Chang, author of Sonju, nominated for the National Book Award