City of Ash and Red

Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun's Ashes and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment to the headquarters in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease and with garbage collecting on the streets. No sooner does he disembark than he is whisked away by quarantine officials and detained overnight. Isolated and forgotten, he realizes that he is stranded with no means of contacting the outside world. Still worse, when he finally manages to reach an old friend he is told that his ex-wife's body was found in his apartment and he is the prime suspect. Barely managing to escape arrest, he must struggle among the rat-infested, garbage-filled streets to survive in this foreign city gripped with fears of contamination and to reestablish contact with his company and friends and clear his reputation.

But as the man's former life slips further and further from his grasp, and he looks back on his time with his wife, it becomes clear that he may not quite be who he seems to be. From the bestselling author of The Hole, Ashes and Red is an apocalyptic account of the destructive impact of fear and paranoia on people's lives as well as a haunting novel about a man’s loss of himself and his humanity.