Doha, a North Korean spymaster, is found stabbed in an alley in Oxford. Doha tells his mentee–another North Korean spy named Yohan—to go to the Oxford Soju Club, a restaurant in the British college town. That starts a dance between three different Koreans: Yohan; Jihoon, the South Korean owner of the Soju Club; and Yunah, a Korean-American recruited to weed out Yonah.

Oxford Soju Club (Dundurn Press, 2025), the debut novel from Jinwoo Park, uses this spy thriller setting to explore ideas of history, migration and identity.

Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal. He completed a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford, and currently works as a marketer in the tech industry. In 2021, he won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Oxford Soju Club. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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