When We Swallowed the Sea

The debut novel by one of the most decorated Korean literary translators today, a sweeping yet intimate family saga following a lineage of haenyeo divers

For generations, Korea’s haenyeo—the sea women of Jeju—have risked everything, plunging into the depths so their families might eat. Trained from childhood to inherit this dangerous life, Soom, whose name means breath, works the sea alongside her mother Haeja. Each dive is an unbearable reminder of their beloved Jinju, Soom’s older sister, who drowned five years earlier. But on the night of the anniversary of Jinju’s death, Soom is forced to abandon her family and flee the island prematurely after committing a violent act to defend her mother.

Exquisitely told across ten voices and three generations, When We Swallowed the Sea is a rich family tapestry in which myth and memory, survival and sorrow, exile and return are inextricably bound. For readers of Min Jin Lee, Celeste Ng, and Rachel Khong, the novel asks what it means to carry unbearable grief, revealing how, like diving itself, love and loss demand that we risk everything—and how every breath is always a miracle.