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Description of  Everything Belongs to Us: A Novel

Two young women of vastly different means each struggle to find her own way during the darkest hours of South Koreas economic miracle in a striking debut novel for readers of Anthony Marra and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie. Seoul, 1978. At South Koreas top university, the nations best and brightest compete to join the professional elite of an authoritarian regime. Success could lead to a life of rarefied privilege and wealth failure means being left irrevocably behind. For childhood friends Jisun and Namin, the stakes couldnt be more different. Jisun, the daughter of a powerful business mogul, grew up on a mountainside estate with lush gardens and a dedicated chauffeur. Namins parents run a tented food cart from dawn to curfew her sister works in a shoe factory. Now Jisun wants as little to do with her fathers world as possible, abandoning her schoolwork in favor of the underground activist movement, while Namin studies tirelessly in the service of one goal: to launch herself and her family out of poverty. But everything changes when Jisun and Namin meet an ambitious, charming student named Sunam, whose need to please his family has led him to a prestigious club: the Circle. Under the influence of his mentor, Juno, a manipulative social climber, Sunam becomes entangled with both women, as they all make choices that will change their lives forever. In this sweeping yet intimate debut, Yoojin Grace Wuertz details four intertwining lives that are rife with turmoil and desire, private anxieties and public betrayals, dashed hopes and broken dreamswhile a nation moves toward prosperity at any cost.