Exhibit: A Novel
NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE

"Hypnotic...a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up." -Time Magazine

"R.O. Kwon's Exhibit is, hands down, the sexiest novel of the year." -Vogue

"A highly sensory experience...lingers like a mysterious, multihued bruise." -The New York Times

"One of the most buzzed-about books of the year...fiery, sexual, and undeniably original." -Poets & Writers

From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, an exhilarating, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life.


At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.

Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She's been told that if she doesn't keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?
1143644546
Exhibit: A Novel
NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE

"Hypnotic...a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up." -Time Magazine

"R.O. Kwon's Exhibit is, hands down, the sexiest novel of the year." -Vogue

"A highly sensory experience...lingers like a mysterious, multihued bruise." -The New York Times

"One of the most buzzed-about books of the year...fiery, sexual, and undeniably original." -Poets & Writers

From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, an exhilarating, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life.


At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.

Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She's been told that if she doesn't keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?
17.5 In Stock
Exhibit: A Novel

Exhibit: A Novel

by R. O. Kwon

Narrated by Ami Park, Sue Jean Kim

Unabridged — 5 hours, 18 minutes

Exhibit: A Novel

Exhibit: A Novel

by R. O. Kwon

Narrated by Ami Park, Sue Jean Kim

Unabridged — 5 hours, 18 minutes

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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

From the author of The Incendiaries comes a spirited and sexy novel about one woman’s search for meaning and feeling.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY VOGUE, ELLE, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE

"Hypnotic...a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up." -Time Magazine

"R.O. Kwon's Exhibit is, hands down, the sexiest novel of the year." -Vogue

"A highly sensory experience...lingers like a mysterious, multihued bruise." -The New York Times

"One of the most buzzed-about books of the year...fiery, sexual, and undeniably original." -Poets & Writers

From bestselling author R. O. Kwon, an exhilarating, blazing-hot novel about a woman caught between her desires and her life.


At a lavish party in the hills outside of San Francisco, Jin Han meets Lidija Jung and nothing will ever be the same for either woman. A brilliant young photographer, Jin is at a crossroads in her work, in her marriage to her college love Philip, and in who she is and who she wants to be. Lidija is an alluring, injured world-class ballerina on hiatus from her ballet company under mysterious circumstances. Drawn to each other by their intense artistic drives, the two women talk all night.

Cracked open, Jin finds herself telling Lidija about an old familial curse, breaking a lifelong promise. She's been told that if she doesn't keep the curse a secret, she risks losing everything; death and ruin could lie ahead. As Jin and Lidija become more entangled, they realize they share more than the ferocity of their ambition, and begin to explore hidden desires. Something is ignited in Jin: her art, her body, and her sense of self irrevocably changed. But can she avoid the specter of the curse? Vital, bold, powerful, and deeply moving, Exhibit asks: how brightly can you burn before you light your life on fire?

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for Exhibit

"A hypnotic queer love story full of lust and longing...a haunting romance about desire, obsession, and ambition that is sure to get your heart rate up." —Time Magazine

"R. O. Kwon’s Exhibit is, hands down, the sexiest novel of the year...her examination of kink, desire, shame, lust and the liminal space we enter when we finally stop denying ourselves...makes Exhibit uniquely successful and powerfully sexy." —Vogue

"Bewitching." —People Magazine

"A highly sensory experience, awash in petals and colors, smells and flavors, that adds to the literature on a proclivity much discussed and often misunderstood. It lingers like a mysterious, multihued bruise." The New York Times

"Kwon is a deeply sensual writer...The idea of a divided self, a way of half-living, defines this book. Even the meaning of the title suggests an art exhibit, of course, but also the question of what we show with our lives. What kind of story do we tell others, and more important, ourselves?" The Washington Post

"Kwon’s poetic prose gilds a narrative that tightly weaves together myth, self-exploration, and artistic ambition." The New Yorker

"Pulses with the queer desire of Korean women, past and present." —San Francisco Chronicle

“An expansive view of the things women are punished for wanting…unflinching." —The Atlantic

“One of the most buzzed-about books of the year…fiery, sexual, and undeniably original.” —Poets & Writers

"Kwon is one of the finest stylists of her generation...the savage beauty and intensity of the prose gets under your skin, lingering like the bruises Lidija leaves on Jin." —Literary Review

"R. O. Kwon extracts hidden, taboo desires with precision, and her hair-raising prose sizzles...Your stomach might lurch and your heart might beat faster as you enter Jin’s inner monologue of suppressed wants bursting at the seams." —KQED

"A searing study of art, desire, and bodily and intellectual freedom...Kwon's sentences are like grenades, carefully wrought and concentrated with meaning." —Shelf Awareness

"Kwon’s prose is unlike any other, sensuous and sumptuous and yet razor-sharp." —Electric Literature

"In a hypnotic, sensual stream of consciousness...Kwon explores an intimacy that grows into obsession, revealing insights into the nature of power, sexuality, and free will." —Bustle

"An exhilarating novel about being caught between the desires of the future and the specters of the past." —Nylon

"Muscular and intelligent...A bold, tough novel that invites the viewer’s gaze and stares defiantly back." —Kirkus

"Displays, in stark relief, the patterns created by what we repress, what we celebrate, and how we transform shame into joy: it’s exquisitely curated and terrifically complicated." —Chicago Review of Books

"R. O. Kwon, bless her, takes religion seriously...For Kwon, religion names experience at the border of the speakable and unspeakable, the personal and the public. Her novels understand that we lean on what renders us unsteady, that desire inhabits a realm reason can only glimpse...Kwon’s understanding of this strange relationship between belief and unbelief places her alongside, of all people, Ludwig Wittgenstein." —The Los Angeles Review of Books

“R. O. Kwon writes stunningly about the hunger for transcendence, for something larger than oneself, more encompassing than society...Exhibit feels intended to free readers. It is a novel that makes profound and singular and visible private experiences often considered askance in American fiction, when they are considered at all. The effect is of a kind of openness, a nuanced patterning of shadow and light.” —Alta

“R. O. Kwon puts queer love, loss and faith on 'exhibit' in [her] new novel...The incisive mining of these inner conflicts and identity crises—how to exist in a society that expects you to be a God-fearing, family-oriented woman, when such labels no longer apply—is a throughline fearlessly explored by Kwon.” —CNN

“A lyrical, sensual exploration of the relationship between two Korean American women—Jin, a photographer, and Lidija, a ballet dancer—who meet at a party and soon establish bonds both creative and sexual.” —Boston Globe

“In prose at once sharp and lush, Kwon crafts a gripping tale of a woman wrestling with the past, while boldly making her own future. A haunting and powerful exploration of art, racism, feminism, and desire, this novel will stay with me a long time.”
—Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Circe and The Song of Achilles

Exhibit is sensational – a novel that's both intimate and operatic, singular and world-encompassing. Kwon's prose is soulful and piercing, chronicling the many ways we lose and find ourselves, blending love and sex and fables between the infinite folds that encompass desire. Exhibit is entirely captivating, and Kwon is truly masterful; it's a book for the mind and the heart and the body, an actual tour de force.”
—Bryan Washington, bestselling author of Family Meal and Memorial

Exhibit is extraordinary: brisk, jolting, brilliant, beautiful, true. A ghost story, a tale of passion, a captivating portrait of how art is made, it turns myths upside down, assumptions inside out, all in the most exquisite prose in the bookstore. Kwon is one of the finest American writers, and her latest is a must for all readers.”
—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less is Lost

"I tore through this. Exhibit explores how obliteration can be a kind of rebirth, how the nuances of that are complicated by the constraints of chosen and socially imposed identities. Kwon writes about art and ardor with urgency."
—Raven Leilani, New York Times bestselling author of Luster

"A rare jewel of a book, at once forceful and unrepentant, delicate and shimmering. R. O. Kwon carves language into a wondrous, jagged thing, revealing facets of desire usually hidden. To read Exhibit is to feel time slow down."
—C Pam Zhang, bestselling author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold and Land of Milk and Honey

MAY 2024 - AudioFile

Ami Park, with additional narration from Sue Jean Kim, performs this engrossing novel from an American rising literary star. Photographer Jin Han lives a quiet life with her husband as she tries to make it as an artist in San Francisco. When she meets ballet dancer Lidija Jung, her entire world changes forever. Jin feels immediately drawn to Lidija, who quickly becomes her muse. Throughout the entire story, Park's voice rises and falls with the women's sexual tension and highlights the electricity between the two women as Lidija satisfies Jin in ways she never knew she needed. Park's performance keeps listeners on edge as we wonder what will become of this all-consuming affair. K.D.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2024-02-17
An artist at a crossroads in her career and personal life develops a relationship with a ballet dancer.

Jin Han is a photographer on the edge of 30. She’s had acclaim in the past with a series about religious pilgrims, but she’s afraid the “image has left”—she hasn’t produced any work worth keeping in a long time. She’s under a different kind of pressure from her husband, Philip, who, despite agreeing early in their relationship not to have children, seems to have changed his mind. In Jin’s liminal state, she can’t help but ponder the story passed down through her family about a curse on them originated by a long-ago kisaeng—a girl sold into courtesanship. (The profane kisaeng cuts into the narrative from time to time to tell her own story.) The curse foretells that Jin will steer her life into ruins; it’s just as she’s pondering how this could unfold that she meets Lidija Jung. Korean like Jin, Lidija gave herself that name as a child when she devoted her life to ballet. Immediately, the women are drawn to each other; through Lidija, Jin will learn about freedom from shame and expectation—and the consequences, both elating and frightening, of that same freedom. As ever, Kwon’s style may divide readers. In a book all about image and presentation, the baroque sentences make conceptual sense. But at the level of plot, the writing is often clipped and elliptical, withholding a great deal when it comes to action. Like overexposed photographs, this strategy is both luminescent and obfuscating: It can be hard to see to the heart of the matter. Nevertheless, Kwon’s novel is a muscular and intelligent examination of the layers of Jin’s identity.

A bold, tough novel that invites the viewer’s gaze and stares defiantly back.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940159708953
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 05/21/2024
Edition description: Unabridged
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