Jung Jidon

about

Born in Daegu in 1983, Jung Jidon studied film and creative writing. He made his literary debut in 2013 when he won the New Writer’s Award hosted by the literary magazine Literature and Society. He has also won the Best Young Writer Award in 2015 and the Moonju Literature Award in 2016.

books

Brave New Human

Published April 29, 2024 by Eunhaeng Namu, Genre: Sci-fi, literary fiction

For readers of Brave New World and Never Let Me Go

In a near future where reproduction is state-controlled, “outborns”—humans conceived through government-run IVF programs—live under the shadow of their unnatural origins. Identical in appearance to natural-born humans but marked by barcodes and social stigma, they are raised without parents, property, or legal personhood.

Ami, an outborn scientist who spends her nights having casual sex with strangers, has long accepted this reality. She doesn’t believe in family, obligation, or meaning—at least until her missing friend Hyunji reappears, eight months pregnant with an illegal child and in possession of a terrifying secret: all outborns may descend from a single, unidentified sperm donor known only as “Father.”

As Ami and her natural-born boyfriend Cheol-su begin to investigate, they are drawn into a web of competing ideologies. From the complacent Type-2 outborns and the supremacist New Humanists, to the retro-revivalist Analogists and the cold utopianism of Raizkoon, the outborn-turned-tech mogul, each faction claims to know what the future of humanity should look like.

But as violence erupts across the country over the murder of two natural-borns, Ami is forced to confront a question she has spent her whole life avoiding: If you are born without love, without a lineage, without a home, can you still be human?

Brave New Human is a philosophical science fiction novel about state power, artificial birth, and the human condition in a post-biological society. Equal parts speculative mystery and political allegory, the novel explores how identity is shaped not by biology, but the desire for human connection—and what happens when even that is forbidden.