From the author of Ocean’s Godori and Teo’s Durumi comes a standalone contemporary fantasy set in a Korean bathhouse afterlife, following a resident who won’t let anything—even her own deaths—stop her from trying to escape.
We’re thrilled to share the cover of Elaine U. Cho’s The Final Death of Namjoo Han—publishing April 27, 2027 with Saga / S&S.
Namjoo Han is on a roll: she’s died over a hundred times and isn’t looking to slow down anytime soon. She’s determined to break out of Sonamu, a circle of the afterlife that’s a sprawling Korean bathhouse, because she has unfinished business in the above-world. But Sonamu has been intricately designed to keep people in, and it doles painful deaths to anyone who challenges its labyrinth.
Enlisting the help of other Sonamu residents, who have shadowed pasts of their own, and the circle’s enigmatic new grim reaper, Namjoo soon discovers that the key to getting out may require far more than evading deadly traps, solving elaborate puzzles, and slaying mythological beasts.
Inspired by the video game Hades, and with elements of Spirited Away and Dante’s Inferno, The Final Death of Namjoo Han will transport readers to hell and back as Namjoo tries to outplay death itself.
From artist Jee-ook Choi:
“To reflect the title and central concept of the novel, I wanted to bring the protagonist more directly into the composition, using repetition as a key visual motif. Multiple versions of the main character wander through the bathhouse, emphasizing the feeling of becoming lost again and again. I was also interested in the idea of portraying a clean, minimal vision of hell, and developed the cover around the contrast between familiarity and unease.”
From author Elaine U. Cho:
“The Final Death of Namjoo Han is a new genre for me, and I’m so grateful to have the talented Jee-ook Choi’s cool and beautiful style creating a cohesion across all my titles. I love her interpretation of the iterations of Namjoo’s attempts juxtaposed with the sonamu, a Korean pine tree that symbolizes longevity, depicted in early tomb paintings and often planted around royal tombs and temples in Korea.”
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The Final Death of Namjoo Han
Elaine U. Cho is a former film critic, former bookseller at Elliott Bay Book Company, and current associate editor for Shelf Awareness. She has an MFA in flute performance from CalArts and is a kyūdō practitioner. Her first duology comprises Ocean’s Godori and Teo’s Durumi.
