The Age of Civilized Violence collects seven short stories dating from winter 2013 onwards. They show a new side of Jeong Yi Hyun, who in the mid-2000s was known for her irreverent, challenging outlook and attention to sensuality and detail—all of which still apply to the new book, but here the author focuses on the humiliation and inertia that plague modern society in the 2010s. 

Today’s world as captured by Jeong is one in which people routinely humiliate each other while maintaining a civilized façade. This refined kind of violence is a recurring theme in all of the stories. Characters consider themselves above “personal attacks or condescending towards” someone, but still manage to do so by a refusal to “adopt any attitude toward anyone.” Casual humiliation is the theme that unites characters across different generations and nationalities—from veteran politician Park (“Ferris Wheel at Night”) who “routinely offends” others, to the children of country K (“Always, Summer”) that completely ignore transfer student Lee, who was bullied for being fat at a previous school and now does not even merit that. 

The book offers one piece of advice for those who must survive this constant exchange of humiliation: “become harder, much, much harder.” This is not an edict to become a baddie oneself, but rather to toughen up. Even when daily life has become a nightmare, people still manage to keep going. This is Jeong Yi Hyun’s interest here: how people carry on with their lives while enduring micro-aggressions like “shards of glass” that “cut the feet with each step.”