The Impossible Fairytale

The Impossible Fairy Tale tells the story of the nameless 'Child', who struggles to make a mark on the world, and her classmate Mia, whose spoiled life is everything the Child's is not.

At school, adults are nearly invisible, and the society the children create on their own is marked by cruelty, soul-crushing hierarchies and an underlying menace. Then, one day after hours, the Child sneaks into the classroom to add ominous sentences to her classmates' notebooks, unlocking a series of events with cataclysmically horrible consequences.

But that is not the end of this eerie, unpredictable novel…

Han Yujoo's The Impossible Fairy Tale is a fresh and terrifying exploration of the ethics of creativity, and of the stinging consequences of neglect.

Han Yujoo is the author of The Impossible Fairytale. She was born in Seoul in 1982, studied German literature at Hongik University, obtained a master’s degree in aesthetics from the prestigious Seoul National University, and is currently working toward another master’s degree in comparative literature from Seoul National University. She is also a noted translator, whose works include translations of Michael Ondaatje’s The Cat’s Table, and Geoff Dyer’s But Beautiful and The Ongoing Moment , among others, into Korean. In addition, she runs her own micro-press, Oulipo Press, focusing on experimental fiction.