Diary Of A Murderer: And Other Stories

“Filled with the kind of sublime, galvanizing stories that strike like a lightning bolt, searing your nerves . . . It’s easy enough to see why Kim . . . is acclaimed as the best writer of his generation; pick up this book and find out for yourself.” — Nylon  It’s been twenty-five years since I last murdered someone, or has it been twenty-six?  Diary of a Murderer captivates and provokes in equal measure, exploring what it means to be on the edge—between life and death, good and evil. In the titular novella, a former serial killer suffering from memory loss sets his sights on one final target: his daughter’s boyfriend, who he suspects is also a serial killer. In other stories we witness an affair between two childhood friends that questions the limits of loyalty and love; a family’s disintegration after a baby son is kidnapped and recovered years later; and a wild, erotic ride about pursuing creativity at the expense of everything else.             From “one of South Korea’s best and most worldly writers” (NPR), Diary of a Murderer is chilling and high-powered all the way through.   “Kim is expert at finding the humanity inside the other, the comedy inside the tragedy, and the twisted within the seemingly normal.” — CrimeReads

Nicole Richie, Vogue, "13 Books Nicole Richie is Reading While Isolating" "This is celebrated Korean writer Young-ha Kim’s first story collection to be translated into English, and it is filled with the kind of sublime, galvanizing stories that strike like a lightning bolt, searing your nerves. The titular novella follows a reformed serial killer who has given himself one more target

"Reminds me a little of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous in that it reads like poetry at times, and it takes you through a heartbreaking dream. There's a lot of heat and emotion in this book."

CrimeReads, "The Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2019" "The premise of a skilled, aging murderer unable to trust his own memories is a quirky spin on the moral quagmires that criminal antiheroes usually face...Kim’s use of pastiche

“Kim is expert at finding the humanity inside the other, the comedy inside the tragedy, and the twisted within the seemingly normal. In his short story collection Diary of A Murder, the titular novella guides us through the deteriorating mind of a serial killer as he tries to save his daughter from becoming victim to another killer in town before he succumbs to Alzheimer’s, while subsequent short stories showcasing an O. Henry-level irony mixed with an Italo Calvino style of humanism.”

“Diary of a Murderer and Other Stories is a brilliant collection of short stories that run the gamut from intense thrillers to introspective reflections on p

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

It's been twenty-five years since I last murdered someone, or has it been twenty-six? Anyway, it's about that long ago. What drove me back then wasn't, as people usually assume, the urge to kill or some sexual perversion. It was disappointment. It was hope for a more perfect pleasure. Each time I buried a victim, I repeated to myself: I can do better next time.The very reason I stopped killing was because that hope vanished.I kept a journal. An objective report. Maybe I needed something like that at the time. What I'd done wrong, how that made me feel. I had to write it down so I wouldn't repeat the same gut-wrenching mistakes. Just like students keep a notebook with all their test mistakes, I also kept meticulous records of every step of my murders and what I felt about them.It was a stupid thing to do.Coming up with sentences was grueling. I wasn't trying to be literary and it was just a daily log, so why was it so difficult? Not being able to fully express the ecstasy and pity I'd felt made me feel lousy. Most of the fiction I'd read was from Korean-language textbooks. They didn't have any of the sentences I needed. So I started reading poetry.That was a mistake.The poetry teacher at the community center was a male poet around my age. On the first day of class he made me laugh when he said solemnly, 'Like a skillful killer, a poet is someone who seizes language and ultimately kills it."This was after I'd already 'seized and ultimately killed' dozens of prey and buried them. But I didn't think what I did was poetry. Murder's less like poetry and more like prose. Anyone who tries it knows that much. Murdering someone is even more troublesome and filthy than you think.Anyway, thanks to the teacher I got interested in poetry. I was born the type who can't feel sadness, but I respond to humor.I'm reading the Diamond Sutra: 'Abiding nowhere, give rise to the mind."I took the poetry classes for a long stretch. I'd decided that if the class was lame I would kill the instructor, but thankfully, it was interesting. The instructor made me laugh several times, and he even praised my poems twice. So I let him live. He probably still doesn't know that he's living on borrowed time. I recently read his latest poetry collection, which was disappointing. Should I have put him in his grave back then?To think that he keeps writing poems with such limited talent when even a gifted murderer like me has given up killing. How brazen.I keep stumbling these days. I fall off my bicycle or trip on a stone. I've forgotten a lot of things. I've burned the bottoms of three teapots. Eunhui called and told me she made me an appointment at the doctor's. While I yelled and roared with anger, she stayed silent until she said, 'something is definitely not normal. Something definitely happened to your head. It's the first time I've ever seen you get angry, Abba."Had I really never gotten angry before? I was still feeling dazed when Eunhui hung up. I grabbed the cell phone to finish our conversation, but suddenly I couldn't remember how to make a phone call. Did I first have to press the Call button? Or did I dial the number first? And what was Eunhui's phone number? I remember there being a simpler way to do this.I was frustrated. And annoyed. I threw the cell phone across the room.I didn't know what poetry was, so I wrote honestly about the process of murder. My first poem, was it called 'Knife and Bones'? The instructor remarked that my use of language was fresh. He said that its raw quality and the perceptive way I imagined death depicted the futility of life. He repeatedly praised my use of metaphors.I asked, 'What's a metaphor?"The instructor grinned'I didn't like that smile'and explained 'metaphor' to me. So a metaphor was a figure of speech.Ah-ha.Listen, sorry to let you down, but that wasn't a figure of speech.I grabbed a copy of the Heart Sutra and began reading:So, in the emptiness, no form,No feeling, thought, or choice,Nor is there consciousness.No eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind.No color, sound, smell, taste, touch,Or what the mind takes hold of,Nor even act of sensing.No ignorance or end of it,Nor all that comes of ignorance.No withering, no death,No end of them.Nor is there pain, or cause of pain,Or cease in pain, or noble pathTo lead from pain.Not even wisdom to attain!  The instructor asked me, 'so you really haven't studied poetry before?'

About the Author

YOUNG-HA KIM is the author of seven novels—four published in the United States, including the acclaimed I Have the Right to Destroy Myself and the award-winning Black Flower—and five short-story collections. He has won every major Korean literature award, and his works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Seoul, South Korea.

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