Inequality is a fatal weapon in Cho Nam-Joo’s second novel Saha. Following her 2016 breakout bestseller, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, a tale of female straitjacketing in Korean society that rode on the #MeToo wave and sold more than 1mn copies, this new book births an oppressive dystopia where the shadows of real-world problems are chillingly visible.

There’s a lot — perhaps too much — that Cho sets in her sights: malevolent state control, female disempowerment, state-designed poverty, eugenics, and liberty versus public health in the face of a Covid-19-esque pandemic. For its clever, quiet pay-off, Saha feels like a daunting attempt at a political fable with an untidy assortment of targets.

In a city state named “Town”, the population is controlled by a faceless committee called the Seven Premiers and coerced into groups of respectable “Citizens”, lesser standing “L2s”, and the motley unfortunates who service them all, eking a living on Town’s fringes, the Saha Estates. Over the four decades of Town’s existence, the Saha Estates have become a kind of sinkhole for misfortune and exile, drawing in unlucky characters from neighbouring countries who know they can hide there.

Outsiderdom is passed down like a genetic trait, but also finds itself systemically nurtured by barriers to good jobs and simple resources. There are ironic touches of a menial, self-sufficient utopia in Saha itself — water is filled from communal taps, electricity comes from solar panels, and the diet is one of frugal fruit and vegetables. Living like this could save the planet, Cho seems to hint, were it not for the brutal lack of healthcare and social compassion. (Futuristic, eco-minded and real-life planned cities, such as Saudi Arabia’s The Line, come to mind as awkward parallels.)

It is Saha Estates where adult brother and sister Dok-yung and Jin-kyung arrive, shell shocked and penniless, and raise eyebrows by sharing — through desperation — a one-bedroom unit. Cho favours a disjointed form of storytelling, sometimes heightening the dread pull of secrets from the characters’ past and at other times building a sense that the torrid plotting might not be leading anywhere coherent. We learn that the siblings’ flight to Saha, for example, was provoked by the fallout from the gory, unexplained death of their mother, itself following the slow and miserable death of their father. But some of this detail feels less moving than Cho’s simpler evocation of their circumstance.

When Dok-yung becomes involved with a Town doctor, a woman named Su, who gives clandestine care to the Saha residents, the entwining of their vastly different social statuses starts to damage their hopes for better chapters ahead. Before long, Su is found dead and violated in a car park, and the assumed guilt of and manhunt for Dok-yung provides the narrative drive of the novel, as his older sister Jin-kyung tries to piece together what has gone wrong.

Here the book dives back into older generations of tragedy, crime and trespass. We learn that decades ago a state-organised ship transporting second-class citizens mysteriously vanished at sea during the night, leading to an outcry and then a mini rebellion among the Town residents whose loved ones disappeared.

Rumour and myth thrive at the surface in Saha, while cold hard facts are hidden in plain sight. This extends to the estates’ elders, too — Granny Konnim turns out to have been more than a midwife in her previous home, in a territory where abortion was outlawed.

That Saha fails to make sense of all of these stories and iniquities — or show the totality of an oppressed people — seems inevitable. Where it does succeed is in showing how far a state can exist in people’s minds, and sow fear and control there, even without any explicit evidence or threat of mistreatment. No one, not even the Seven Premiers, is quite what they seem.

Saha by Cho Nam-Joo, Scribner £19.85/$22, 240 pages

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