Almond Read online

  Because, to Yunjae, love is not confined in a box—he did not have any box, to begin with. I hope the English readers will feel the same rush of emotions from Yunjae’s almond as I did.

  Here ends Won-pyung Sohn’s

  Almond.

  The first edition of this book was printed and

  bound at LSC Communications in

  Harrisonburg, Virginia, May 2020.

  A NOTE ON THE TYPE

  The text of this novel was set in ITC Century Light. The ITC Century® typeface was originally commissioned for an American magazine called The Century near the end of the nineteenth century in order to make their typeface more readable. Century’s heavier hairlines and increased x-height made it a popular choice for readers, so much so that additional designs were created as offshoots of Century, pioneering the concept of typeface families and making Century Expanded the first “superfamily.”

  An imprint dedicated to publishing international voices, offering readers a chance to encounter other lives and other points of view via the language of the imagination.

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ALMOND. Copyright © 2020 by Won-pyung Sohn. English translation copyright by Sandy Joosun Lee. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Originally published as 아몬드 in South Korea in 2017 by Changbi Publishers.

  FIRST EDITION

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Son, Wŏn-p'yŏng, 1979-author. | Lee, Joosun, translator.

  Title: Almond : a novel / Won-Pyung Sohn, Joosun Lee.

  Other titles: Amondŭ. English

  Description: First edition. | New York : HarperCollins, 2020. |

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019044008 (print) | LCCN 2019044009 (ebook) | ISBN 9780062961372 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780062961402 (ebook)

  Classification: LCC PL994.77.W66 A87 2020 (print) | LCC PL994.77.W66 (ebook) | DDC 895.73/5—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044008

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019044009

  * * *

  Digital Edition MARCH 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-296140-2

  Version 03072020

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-296137-2

  ISBN 978-0-06-304146-2 (ANZ)

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  * The title of the Korean translation is The Love Technique.