Capitalists Must Starve

Park Seolyeon | Paperback | January 2026 

From the writer and translator duo of A Magical Girl Retires, a powerful historical novel about labour activism in Japanese-occupied Korea.

Set against the backdrop of Japanese-occupied Korea, Capitalists Must Starve follows a sharp-tongued, big-hearted heroine who dares to love, rebel, and carve out space for working-class women in a world determined to silence them. Echoing the unflinching narratives of Alias Grace and the sweeping historical vision of Pachinko, this feminist historical novel balances raw grit with unexpected tenderness and a defiant streak of dark humour.

A stirring portrait of resistance from below: fierce, funny, and full of fight.

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Author Info

Born in 1989, Park Seolyeon made her debut by winning the Silcheon Munhak New Writers Prize in 2015. She is the author of A Magical Girl Retires among other novels and short story collections. In 2018, she won the Hankyoreh Literature Prize for her novel Capitalists Must Starve. Her stories have been translated into Japanese, French, German, and English. She currently lives in Seoul.

Anton Hur was born in Stockholm. He is the author of Toward Eternity and has been nominated for the International Booker Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Dublin Literary Award for his various translations including Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park and A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon. He lives in Seoul.