[Short Fiction Series 20]

A Toy City is the first in a trilogy of novellas that also includes “The Hungry Soul” and “The Hour of Judas.” Written from the perspective of a young boy in elementary school, A Toy City is set in the post war period of the 1950s, painting Seoul as simultaneously bleak and impoverished but also ‘toy-like’ in the eyes of the boy. Although this young narrator lives in extreme poverty in a city ghetto, wracked by constant hunger and dependent on an utterly incompetent father, the story of the A Toy City is more than just a sob story; it is both beautiful and touching.