Fabulous Fiction Firsts #136

Fri, 12/12/2008 - 4:45pm by muffy

A 2007 Hopwood Awards winner, Nami Mun's debut novel Miles from Nowhere* has garnered enthusiastic praise from many critics.

Set in the 1980s, it is the coming-of-age story of Joon, a Korean-American teenage runaway. Survival means homeless shelters, jail, hunger, drugs, prostitution, and terror on the mean streets of New York, - gritty and unflinching.

“There is nothing simplistic or sensationalized here as Mun, a writer of gravitas, portrays the dispossessed and the cast-out…”. However, it is her portrayal of Joon who remains “inviolable, kind and determined”, with “a fierce survival instincts, adaptability and radiance” that carries the reader towards a hopeful ending.

*= Starred Reviews. The editors of Booklist have picked Miles as one of the First Novel Stars on their annual list.