Afterimages

A queer coming-of-age expat novel about first love, the varied roles we play in each other's lives, and the timeless struggle for meaning amidst the ennui of early adulthood.

Recent university graduate and late-bloomerSwallow experiences the disorienting loneliness and excitement of living abroad when she moves to South Korea to teach English. There, she falls in love for the first time after meeting the elusive and intense Noeul, and the pair embark on a passionate, life-altering romance. As they struggle with issues of race, sexuality, and identity, the couple find themselves overwhelmed with the paradox of choice as they weigh the stakes of belonging in a place that only accepts them on condition.

Set over the course of a year and across two continents, this stunning and inventive debut is written in a fragmented, nonlinear narrative style and details the time before, during, and after first love. A series of vignettes chart the familiar notes of mutual attraction, characteristic uncertainty, tentative passion, and ultimately heartbreak. Through these fragments, Afterimages asks how we can make sense of the transience and impermanence of feelings of love and tenderly portrays Swallow's desperation to make hers last forever through words and images.