To kick off the year, we’re reading novels in translation that explore gender, race, and class in East Asia past and present.

Gu Byeong-mo, trans. Chi-Young Kim (Hanover Square Press, 224 pp., $21.99, December 2024)

To kick off the year, we’re reading novels in translation that explore gender, race, and class in East Asia past and present.

Gu Byeong-mo, trans. Chi-Young Kim (Hanover Square Press, 224 pp., $21.99, December 2024)

Cynical writing about heterosexual marriage seems to be everywhere. Last week, Atlantic staff writer Olga Khazan wondered whether she is “Doomed to Be a Tradwife” because even her “enlightened” husband cannot hold up his end of the parenting bargain. Months earlier, the New York Times published a viral exposé of how an influencer couple’s seemingly glitzy life spiraled into suicide. That followed a jaw-dropping contribution to the Cut, which proffered that young women might be best served by getting hitched to older men.

South Korean writer Gu Byeong-mo adds to this canon with her latest novel, Apartment Women. First published in Korean in 2018, the book’s English translation was released last month.

Gu’s story is set at a new housing complex on the outskirts of Seoul. The South Korean government constructed the Dream Future Pilot Communal Apartments in an attempt to combat the country’s low birth rates; after a competitive application process, couples must pledge to live in the building for 10 years and try to have three kids by the end of that time.

Four of the lucky winners—the “apartment women”—are Yojin, Danhui, Gyowon, and Hyonae. All are married to men and have at least one young child. Yojin, a cashier, is the breadwinner in her family who must nevertheless micromanage her husband as he embarks on stay-at-home parenting while “moping around like a bum.” Danhui is the queen bee of the bunch, a control freak “driven by a preternaturally outgoing personality and love for appraising and organizing various matters.” Gyowon, Danhui’s loyal sidekick, is thrifty and deeply insecure, but at least she is “an excellent cook.” Hyonae, a freelance children’s book illustrator, struggles to prove to the others that her work is legitimate.

Apartment Women reads like a dystopian novel, but there is nothing unrealistic or exaggerated about its contents. The book is haunting precisely because it is so relatable, peppered with........

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