Nuclear Family: A Novel
Joseph HanShortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Prize
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, & at times, hilarious novel" — Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of The Descendants
Things are looking up for Mr. & 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 & 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 & 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 & find the family he left behind in the north. As Jacob is detained by the South Korean government, Mr. & Mrs. Cho fear their son won’t ever be able to return home, & Grace gets more & more stoned as she negotiates her family’s undoing. Struggling with what they don’t know about themselves & 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 & strikingly beautiful debut novel is an offering that aches with histories inherited & reunions missed, asking how we heal in the face of what we forget & who we remember.
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Joseph Han is the author of a debut novel, Nuclear Family, forthcoming with Counterpoint Press in Spring 2022. He is currently a West Editor of Joyland Magazine.