SPY. LOVER. MOTHER. SLAVE. ESCAPE ARTIST. MURDERER. TERRORIST. Life near the North Korean border is a zero-sum game, an ongoing battle in which you either win or you lose. This dangerous, shadowed netherworld is home to an unforgettable woman known only as the “trickster.” Inspired by the story of the author’s great-aunt, one of the oldest women to escape alone from North Korea, 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster consists of eight dark and spellbinding chapters that follow this remarkable character and her family as they struggle to survive during the most turbulent times of modern Korean history. Lee’s trickster is a shapeshifter: in these interconnected lives she is variably a slave, an escape artist, a murderer, a terrorist, a spy, a lover, and a mother—a woman who must often choose the unthinkable to stay alive amid war and conquest in Korea.