NEWS

Posted on 6 January, 2026

Happy New Year from the James Bond Book Club! Here’s to a year of daring missions, unforgettable characters, and stories that keep you turning the page. Get ready to enter new worlds and explore the world of espionage – one thrilling book at a time.

Kicking things off, our January pick is Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park. It’s a bold, genre-blending debut published in 2025 that reimagines the spy novel through the lens of identity, nationality, loyalty and belonging. More than just a good story, this month’s choice looks at the masks we wear, the allegiances we forge, and the truths we hide, all set against the storied spires of Oxford.

OVERVIEW

Oxford Soju Club follows a trio of Korean characters whose lives converge in the ancient university city of Oxford. When North Korean spymaster Doha Kim is mysteriously killed, his protégé Yohan Kim – living under the assumed identity of Junichi Nakamura – scrambles to decipher his mentor’s last cryptic message: “Soju Club, Dr. Ryu.” At the same time, Yunah Choi, a Korean American CIA officer, is hot on his trail, while Jihoon Lim, a South Korean immigrant and owner of the eponymous Soju Club restaurant, finds his own peaceful life drawn into the escalating intrigue.

What unfolds is both a taut spy thriller and a deeply felt exploration of the Korean diaspora in which characters must navigate cultural expectations, divided loyalties, and the haunting distance between the selves they show the world and the selves they carry inside.

WHY WE CHOSE IT

At Ian Fleming Publications, we know a thing or two about going undercover — but Oxford Soju Club interrogates that concept in a much deeper, more human way. Park’s debut resonates with the Bond tradition not through tuxedos or glamour, but through psychological tension and international complexity.

What makes the novel particularly compelling is its exploration of identity and performance. Every character exists between worlds, whether undercover as someone they are not, or trying to belong to a country that never feels like home. These layered lives echo the coded existences of spies in fiction, but here they carry stakes that are profoundly human.

Park delivers the thrills, but with a modern twist: the greatest danger is not always a villain’s plot, but the cost of duty, survival, and the masks we wear.

THEMES TO CONSIDER

– Identity and disguise. Beyond literal espionage, Park explores the psychological “masks” that immigrants and operatives alike adopt to survive and belong.

– Belonging and alienation. Each character’s journey asks: where is home when heritage, duty, and personal desire point in different directions?

– Loyalty and truth. The novel probes the delicate balance between allegiance to one’s origins and self-realisation in a globalised world.

– Ritual, connection, and community. The Soju Club itself, a Korean restaurant in Oxford, becomes a site of refuge and reckoning, a space where food, drink, memory, and politics intertwine.

REVIEWS

The New York Times – ‘Park, a Korean Canadian writer and translator, deftly maps the shifting terrain of characters whose identities are in flux and who are haunted by pasts from which they cannot escape. His novel mixes spycraft with tenderness, violence with grace, and introduces a welcome new spy fiction talent.’ 

Booklist – ‘In stylistically rich prose, the author carefully portrays complex characters, distilling the intricate workings of the Korean psyche with riveting tension. Under the cover of a compelling espionage drama, Park conducts a metaphorical exploration of Korean identity.’

Shelf Awareness – ‘Oxford Soju Club, is an extraordinarily multilayered examination of identity and loyalty, deftly presented as an addicting spy thriller.’

Washington Independent Review of Books – ‘[A] dizzying, hyperkinetic debut novel.’

Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer and literary translator whose debut novel brings a fresh, global perspective to espionage fiction. Born and raised in Seoul, he has lived in various parts North America and the UK since the age of eleven. Park completed a master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford and brings both personal insight and narrative finesse to a story that pulsates with tension.

We hope you enjoy Oxford Soju Club as much as we do. Follow our social channels for discussion prompts, highlights and more.