Simple Heart

De: Cho Haejin, Jamie Chang - translator

Narrado por: Jean Yoon

A deeply moving and heartfelt story about a Korean woman who returns to Seoul to unravel the mystery of her origins, thirty-five years after she was found abandoned as a child at a train station.

Before she was named Nana by a French couple who adopted her as a child, she was Esther Pak, a girl growing up in a Korean orphanage. And before she was Esther Pak, she was Munju, a small child abandoned on the railway tracks of Cheongnyangni Station in Seoul.

Nana has no memories of the first three or four years of her life, no family records detailing the personal information of her parents, no birth certificate, or any medical records from the hospital where she was born. She was abandoned on the railway tracks at a station in Seoul, where a train conductor saved her life and took her in for a year, before sending her to an orphanage where she was eventually put up for international adoption.

Adopted by a French couple, she is now a playwright in Paris in her late thirties. The day she finds out she is pregnant with her first child, she receives an email from Seoyeong, a Korean filmmaker who wishes to make a documentary about her life. Nana accepts the offer, hoping to reconcile with her past as she prepares to become a mother herself. She travels to Seoul during the summer and stays at the filmmaker’s apartment. One night, during a power outage, Nana ventures to Bokhee’s Kitchen, the restaurant on the ground floor, and befriends the woman running it. They develop a strong bond. But as Nana moves through Seoul, visiting the orphanage and the train station where she was abandoned thirty-five years ago, the woman everyone calls Bokhee has a stroke and is hospitalized—and her real name and past come to light.

Simple Heart is a powerfully moving novel that delves into the lives of women from post-war to present and touches on international adoption, the U.S. military presence, poverty and class, xenophobia and patriarchy. But above all it is about the bonds of love between women and children, and the difficult choices mothers have to make.

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Simple Heart is an astonishingly tender story of lost and found families. The novel’s sharp clarity and quiet patience allow for memories, secrets and hopes to blossom into profound self-knowledge. A moving work from a generous mind and a complex heart.” —Vinh Nguyen, author of The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse

“What does it mean to belong—to a place, to a name, to yourself? Simple Heart is an extraordinary novel, written with unsparing clarity and luminous tenderness. Cho Haejin bears witness to lives marked by abandonment and silence, yet sustained by the smallest acts of kindness. The result is storytelling at once devastating and consoling—unsettling and unforgettable in its revelations about what it means to live on—and to belong. Deeply resonant. Utterly moving.” —Yeji Y. Ham, author of The Invisible Hotel

“At its core, Simple Heart is a story of relationships—with ourselves, with family, and with strangers who may become friends, and even confidants. Cho’s vivid world-building pulls readers deep into the pages, immersing them in a journey that stirs fear and sorrow, yet blossoms into love, acceptance and hope. Moving and resonant, Simple Heart connects readers to other worlds and experiences—anything but simple, and unforgettable at heart.” —Ann Y. K. Choi, author of All Things Under the Moon

“Decades after being abandoned by her mother and taken in by a stranger, only to be given up for adoption overseas, Nana returns to South Korea to cast light on her origins. Far from a simple heart, Nana is possessed of a restive, searching, lonely, sometimes bitter but ultimately munificent heart, from which springs the deepest questions of childhood, motherhood, womanhood and personhood. Cho Haejin’s Simple Heart is a beautiful and intimate novel about all the ways family can be lost—and found.” —Jack Wang, author of The Riveter

"A stirring portrait of a young Korean French adoptee who, on the precipice of motherhood, is compelled to reach back into her past to search for her origins and the meaning of her Korean given name. A wise and elegant novel that explores belonging, memory and the heartbreaking, complex history of international adoption in Korea with tenderness and grace." —Gina Chung, author of Sea Change and Green Frog