"If I may say so, I don't think any of you have ever paused to think about what ideology your wives might have. You take it for granted that a woman be uneducated and ignorant, and because you're communes or communists or what, you assume your wives would be as well."

Park Seolyeon writes an engaging and endearing memorial to labour activist Kang Juryong in Capitalists Must Starve. Juryong, often called Ryong by her close friends, is fiery and opinionated, but loves with the same level of passion as she fights for the freedom and rights of her countryfolk. She is thoughtful despite her hot-headedness and loves deeply. Her early days in an arranged marriage are bittersweet, and her final days rescuing her fellow factory workers from their woeful conditions are thrilling. There are stops and stutters in the narrative, but Ryong pulls you through them at her own pace care of Park's writing.

This book has so many excellent individual lines and points of brilliance scattered throughout that it pains me to give it such a low score. I had very high hopes for this work, because I deeply enjoyed Park Seolyeon's A Magical Girl Retires and was eager to see her tackle a more seriously-written work from its foundation up—I also had confidence that Anton Hur would do her justice in his translation, being familiar with her writing. I found no issue with the novel's overall representation of Kang Juryong as far as interest or engagement goes, but somewhere along the way, Tilted Axis Press really let Park down. Whether it was in editing or the actual translation is so hard to say in a work that wasn't originally in English. It makes me wish I knew Korean so I could compare and contrast the work in both, alas.

I sort of wish I had read more of the critical reviews before picking the novel up, because I was very disappointed in the quality of this work. The first thing I noticed was the cover: a matte, "soft touch" cover which (while fine texturally) is a big indicator of a certain quality of printing in indie circles. When I flipped to the back, the text for the blurb was poorly printed and blurry on the cover. Inside, I found exactly what I expected: a URL and QR code for Ingram Spark's Print on Demand service. I understand that this is a way for a small press to cut costs and still produce excellent work at a discount, so I wasn't too worried about it, but as I started reading, my initial reservations on quality were joined by more and more issues.

Another reviewer on a different site speculated that this novel's printing may have been in error: they wondered in their review if the publisher had somehow mistakenly sent the first draft to press instead of the final version, and at this point I would not be shocked were someone to tell me that had actually been the case. The editing is riddled with mistakes (names misspelled such that I thought a new figure was being introduced mid-paragraph in one case, numerous missing words and typos, and Park Seolyeon's given name at the top of every page instead of her surname). The translation feels stiff and stilted, and there's no indication whether this is a stylistic choice to reflect on Korean literary or propagandist traditions of the era, or simply a too-literal, poorly constructed localisation.

The three stars for this novel are all owed to Park's narrative. The missing two stars are for the absolutely abysmal quality of the final product she was given by Tilted Axis.