I really enjoyed Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by the same author so I immediately reached for Saha as an option when compiling my Women in Translation TBR list. Unfortunately, it didn’t reach anywhere near my expectations and I was tempted to DNF on a few occasions.

The story is set in a dystopian world called Town, which 3 different classes of people inhabit. L1s who are the privileged, L2s who are the middle class and finally those who live within Saha mansions. From the start it’s clear that the Saha have the minimalist rights and struggle on a daily basis to even just exist.

The story is told from multiple POVs over a slightly jumpy timeline which I found left me a little lost. In all honesty, I struggled at times to figure out what was going on or even why and the disjointed yet expansive storyline left me wondering just how much was in fact lost in translation.

Maybe it’s a book that would benefit from a reread but for me life’s too short!

This book is incredibly well-written, and incredibly bleak. There's absolutely no hope anywhere in this story. It's really informative about two things: the first is South Korean culture. The second is a more general point about Charter Cities. The Charter City of Town is a phenomenon that is spreading the world. A place where a corporation makes all the laws and employs all the people. A place where dissent is not allowed. Charter Cities are coming to the UK in the wake of Brexit, and this prescient book acts as a warning.

Saha is the second translated novel from Cho Nee-Jom, best known for Kim JiYoung, Born 1982. If you're looking for something similar to that, however, you won't find it here. Instead we have a dystopian tale set in the newly formed country of 'Town' which is governed by a council of seven faceless ministers. Citizens are divided, there are those who are high net worth and educated, therefore valuable to Town's society. We don't meet them in the book. Then there are 'L' class people, a class further divided into two types; those who must renew residence permits every 2 years and those who work contractual, menial jobs, with no opportunity to progress, and remain to an extent stateless. They have no option to even choose their own career path, and live in communities called Saha, apartment blocks akin to social housing. Nee-Jom weaves stories of various members of the latter category artfully, just enough characters that it's not difficult to remember each and how their stories interconnect with each other. I found Ji-Kyung and Woomi's stories most compelling, it's no coincidence that these are the most rebellious characters and probably the more developed of the characters.
Ultimately I really enjoyed this but was looking for even more critical commentary on the regime, especially as the main themes mirror real life society.

A deeply disquieting dystopian novel which was enthralling and disturbing. A 5 star read that I thought about long after I had finished the novel.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

It took me a while to finish this - hence the slow review. It's very different from Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982 which I absolutely adored. I think if it was by a different author I would have read with no preconceptions or expectations, but I did really struggle with this. It's a tough read - both because it's a harrowing dystopia but also because it feels overly complex and hard to follow in it's short-story type format. Loved the sound of it, but couldn't connect unfortunately. I will still pick up Nam-Joo's next book - but do hope it's closer in style to Kim Ji-Young.

This was both fascinating, and hard going. I nearly gave up a couple of times but I'm glad I didn't. The world-building is clever but the jump from person to person occasionally makes things tough to follow - especially at the end.

Saha was beautifully written with some great passages regarding what society is like and why we should question it. I did find the sudden shift to different characters could be a little jarring and sometimes lost track of who was who, but overall an enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

DNF at 20%

I absolutely loved Kim Jiyong, so was excited to read Saha - I'm not sure if it was a formatting issue, or the book was just not to my taste, but I couldn't make head , tail of it. Reading other reviews, this doesn't seem to be uncommon. DNF at 20%

Bit sad that this one didn't work out for me. Began great like a fantastic k-drama but sort of went nowhere.

A plausible dystopia in which a town (called Town) becomes an independent state, first run by a corporation and then by a group of foreign investors who via an unidentified council called the Seven Premiers. The social hierarchy is strict with full citizens (Ls) at the top followed by L2s (on temporary visas) and Sahas at he bottom. Without citizenship they are a marginalised community with few rights names after the dilapidated estate they inhabit. Many are migrants or refugees at they do the hardest, dirtiest, most precarious work, often for food or goods rather than money.

In the opening a young woman, Su, is found dead in a car, with suspicion falling on the Sahas, in particular Dok-yung now missing. Jin-Kyung is his sister and is determined to get to the bottom of what happened to Su and prove her brother's innocence.

It's a very thematic a narrative, exploring the common themes of dystopias, oppression, stratification, dissociation between groups of people, powerful but unknown authority and the world-building is good, but despite an interesting cast I couldn't say it is character-based as they all seem rather flattened, the episodic nature of the writing preventing any real connection building between the reader and the characters. The mystery of Su's death is very much a tool to explore the different people on the estate and in Town and lacks driving force, the resolution rather cursory. There's an overall impression of disconnection that leaves the novel feeling unfinished.

My thanks to Simon and Schuster, UK for a review copy of this book via NetGalley.

Having read the powerful and hard-hitting Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982 by author Cho Nam-Joo, when I found another of her works had been translated, of course, I had to read it.

Saha (first published in 2019, and in translation here by Jamie Chang in 2022) is a dystopian tale albeit not a futuristic one. The book is set in and around an autonomous state, ‘Town’ which had fallen into the control of a large corporation, and is now run by a group of seven ministers whom no one has ever seen. The people of Town are divided according to their wealth and education; under the ‘L’ category are ‘proper’ citizens, living in Town with access to every facility and lives of privilege; ‘L2s’ who are the next degree, able to live in Town so long as they hold employment (usually 2-year contracts which may or may not be renewed), and the lowest rung, the status-less Saha pushed out to the fringes—the ‘Saha Estates’ where they lead precarious existences, in houses in states of disrepair and decay, employment only for short periods and never making them enough to live, and no hope of any change. For the Saha,

Each time they paused to take stock of their lives, they found themselves unfailingly worse off than before; Saha residents thus grew more childish, petty and simpleminded.

Yet the Saha Estates are also a sanctuary, a space where those who have nowhere else can find shelter and can find help—abandoned babies or babies left orphaned, people escaping worse fates in Town or even elsewhere. But the grimness and challenges of life leave many of the Saha wishing for something different, something more.

In this background, Saha opens with the murder of Su, a paediatrician, one who had ‘L’ status but seems to have lost it after she fell in love with Do-Kyung, a Saha. Do-Kyung is instantly a suspect (‘Town’ narratives painting him out to be a stalker and criminal, even when witnesses and evidence testify otherwise) and flees, leaving his older sister Jun-Kyung, who has looked after him since childhood, and is now his only family, to solve the puzzle. But from here, rather than tracing the ‘mystery’ to be solved, the book tells the story of the Saha Estates and its residents, each facing problems of their own—disability, abandonment, violence, and even crimes or mistakes in their pasts—besides the bitter reality of no possible escape from the lives they lead.

Saha is structured rather like another of my recent reads, Café Shira, with the Saha Estates being the factor that ties together the lives of the various residents we follow—each chapter focused on a different person (usually identified by the unit they occupy in the complex), and telling us their story. In the process we move between past and present—how some of these came to live in Saha, how some tried to escape but could never do so or had to eventually return, and what their lives are like in the present.

While these stories may unfold in a dystopian setting, the issues they throw up are ones being witnessed in present-day society—disproportionately rising corporate power, poverty, disenfranchisement (in various forms)—uncomfortably close to lives actually being lived, perhaps across the globe.

Where the book fell short for me was, for one, in the way the thread that the book stated with, the murder of Su was resolved. Although we do get an answer of sorts to the death itself, the explanation is lacking which made it feel unsatisfactory. Again, when Jun-Kyung decides to take certain matters in her hands and face up to the authorities, explanations seem incomplete and while there is a ray of hope in the ending, at the same time, the situation continues to feel irredeemable.

I very much liked the book’s structure as a means to explore the stories of the Saha residents, each of which hold one’s interest and evoke sympathy, yet a number of threads, be it the murder or the fate of certain characters, are never fully explained, leaving the book feeling somewhat unfinished and the reader unsatisfied.

3.5 stars

Published in December, Saha is the second work of Cho Nam-Joo to be translated into English.

Many of you will have read her fascinating, feminist work, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, a work of fiction written in an almost forensic, non-fiction style. Saha is very different, though her rather dispassionate style of writing is employed here too.

When I got about a third of the way into the book, I was very tempted to give up on it. I’m glad I persevered but it’s not a book I’d readily recommend. Saha tackles classism but doesn’t seem sure whether it’s a dystopian thriller or social commentary. In falling between two stools, it loses impact. For such a short book, it’s a little too sprawling.

Saha is set in a fictitious town called Town, owned by a capitalist organisation and run like a business, with three tiers of citizens, the lowest tier of whom (Saha) have the barest of rights, live in poverty without access to medical care and with only casual, contractual work to sustain them.

There are two main characters, a sister and brother, but the book consists of a series of stories of overlapping characters who live in Saha over a period of years. Some of the stories are more interesting than others, but overall this was a gloomy, colourless read with a sparky ending that wasn’t quite enough to rescue it. It did leave me pondering how much was lost in translation. 2.5/5 ⭐️

*Many thanks to the author, the publisher Simon & Schuster, @scribnerbooks and @netgalley for the arc. As always, this is an honest review.*

While the international bestseller Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 illuminated gender-based discrimination, the dystopian social critique "Saha" now tackles classism: Set in a country called Town that was first overtaken by a corporation and is now said to be ruled by a faceless, anonymous Council (capitalism! authoritarianism! lack of accountability!), the novel tells the story of the inhabitants of the Saha Estates, the disenfranchised underclass of Town. The remote land separates its people in three classes: Citizens (L), workers with 2-year-visas (L2), and the aforementioned Sahas who exist in a dire, inescapable circle of hopelessness, exhaustion and desperation.

Cho Nam-Joo evokes this world by stringing together numerous vignettes focusing on different inhabitants of the Saha Estates, both in the present and the past, that highlight different aspects of this class-based society, mainly posing the question why - except from the historical "butterfly riot" - the people of Town mostly don't stand up to the injustice and cruelty that forms the basis of their state. Slowly, it becomes clear what happened to those who dared to rebel...

Now it's kind of silly to criticize a dystopian novel that aims to fight classism for being crude, because let's face it: 1984 is unbelievably crude, and it's also unbelievably great. But Cho Nam-Joo's text starts to get out of control in the last third, when human experiments come into play and a stand-off in a lab turns farcical: The resolution is just too over the top, it has an upsetting effect on the reader who, during the first half, is inclined to agree with the author regarding the overall message - but this message then warps into a far-feteched hero's tale that doesn't really work.

This is unfortunate, because the destinies of average Sahas who fight a merciless system that does not care whether they live or die is emotionally impactful and resonates with phenomena like the opening gap between rich and poor and the corrosion of societal solidarity (not to talk about authoritarian regimes that, let's say: use slaves to build soccer stadiums etc.). The characters are well-rendered, the atmosphere is effectively bleak, the claustrophobic, oppressive social fabric is palpable.

So I wish Cho Nam-Joo would have been able to maintain the strength the story is build on. Still, an interesting text, and this remains a writer to watch.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I felt it was slow at times but then other times interesting and a quick read. I think it took me a bit of time getting into the natural flow of the writing. On paper I should love it, dystopian story told in multiple points of view, but something didn't quite click for me and I can't put my finger on it exactly.

I appreciated the style of writing and the world building, didn't like the story that didn't involved me and fell flat.
Not my cup of tea
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

i read Cho Nam-Joo's celebrated novel so i was curious to see what she wrote next. this kind of struck me as a twinge too grimy, i don't know. it struck me as wanting too hard to be unpleasant...

I very gratefully received a copy of Saha from @netgalley in exchange for an honest review. On paper, Saha was exactly the type of book I love. A dystopian society, multiple POVs, a dash of mystery, crime, science-fiction, class and politics…. Yes!

I was engaged from the get go. Then it fizzled out. Too many characters, plots, twists which don't really lead anywhere…
The ending was also frustrating.

Perhaps it was my high expectations. Perhaps I was influenced by the "low" Goodreads ratings. Or perhaps it just was not a masterpiece...

Saha's dissection of near future capitalist dystopia has an interesting context, but it's definitely has a lot of disparate threads going on which you would expect when following multiple people in in the housing estate, however, for me it didn't always come together. The final quarter of the book sped up the pace in terms of plot. and the opening tension of sexual violence is finally circled back to. The latter stages attempts to show the reader all of these pieces that you're meant to connect together, but as a reader it felt like quite hard work to get them to all make sense. It is a somewhat novel critique of late stage capitalism I didn't find it overtly unique but given the context of the writer brings some specific nuances that in terms of class and Township organisation which was notable. In the end it felt very disjointed.

Oh dear! What a complete disappointment - especially after the outstanding success of Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982, which I absolutely loved.

Set in a dystopian society, Saha seemed to be more of a collection of loosely connected short stories rather than one actual story. It set around various residents of an apartment block called Saha. The people of Saha are labelled as outcasts.

The story started out reasonably well but the writing soon lost all direction and became confusing. I think that the author tried to do too much with the story and it just didn't work for me. Issues that were highlighted just seemed to disappear and were never mentioned again. The toing and froing between the two timelines was also confusing. There were often times when I really didn't understand what was happening at all. The ending was abrupt and offered no closure.

It was an interesting, quick read, although kind of confusing. The whole concept of the society was very vague and even near to the final pages I didn't really fully understand it. I could see what the author was trying to do but overall I don't think they were very successful with it. I like that there were multiple povs to give glimpses of each character's life, but I wish each of them had more page time because I didn't get that attached to them. I guess overall, this book should have been a lot longer.