Video Review of Oxford Soju Club

If you're looking for a story that engages both the mind and the heart in equal measure than I highly recommend Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park.

Let's get the disclaimers out of the way

Park is an author who, just like me, is being published by Dundurn Press. His novel is coming out in early September 2025, in just a few weeks at the time of this recording, and I was lucky enough to get an advance reader's copy for the purposes of review by NetGalley and Dundurn Press. All opinions are still my own.

And they are very high. This is a very ambitious novel that is equal parts spy thriller and immigrant drama.

The plot of the novel starts with the mysterious murder of a master spy in the sleepy English town of Oxford. This results in a clandestine struggle between competing spy agencies to figure out what happened and take advantage of the aftermath. Caught in the middle in the master spy's young protege who wants to figure out who killed his mentor. This is the spy thriller part of the novel's dual nature.

The immigrant drama part comes from the fact that the master spy and protege are North Korean agents and are being pursued by South Korean and American agents, one of whom is Korean-American. As the plot of the novel engages the mind by raising and answering intriguing questions, engagement with the heart comes from the character's ruminating on the life choices that led them to be foreigners in a foreign land wearing and discarding masks to survive.

Park weaves both elements expertly together and as the mysteries are resolved in a satisfying pace, the characters develop accordingly and their regrets for the past, and fears for the future give them, and the novel, life.

The disorientation and uncertainty the characters experience as they struggle to fulfill their objectives while maintaining their cover in a strange land far away from home is an incredibly clever way of evoking the immigrant experience. The skill with which the plot and the character development come to a mutual climax at the end, however, is what elevates the novel to being truly profound.

This is not the easiest read as the story jumps between multiple characters and timelines and deliberately makes it hard to tell which character is being followed at some points of the story. It's like a Christopher Nolan film in that way. But it is an easy four out of five stars and highly recommended for people looking for a read with some heft.