Written by Lee Geum-yi


“The charming journey of life by a girl who is ready to leave her own way any time”

CAN'T I GO INSTEAD
Due to these short words, there is a girl who has lived a life that anyone cannot even dream of. A seven-year-old girl, Soo Nam, has been sold as a birthday gift to a daughter of a nobleman from a tiny village to Seoul. And she got the opportunity to travel around the earth and to finally come back home by going beyond boundaries and crossing the continents. An 8-year-old girl, Chae Ryung, the daughter of a nobleman, got Soo Nam as a birthday gift. She has lived a very good life enough to be envied by anyone, but later, she happened to go through the tough journey of life. Two main characters pioneered their own life and destiny by overcoming all kinds of hardships, such as social position, gender, education, culture, ethnicity, etc. The interesting story of characters’ growing-up with the background of Japanese colonial era and the early stage of national liberation, and the journey covering the wide space are well connected to the life of people living in those days, and make us concentrate on the past history. What would be finally created by the memories and pieces of time in front of the twisted truth?

‘CAN'T I GO INSTEAD?’ is the novel of the author’s life created in 2,000 pages after planning in 2004, first draft completion in 2014, and correction work for one and half more year. Readers can feel how much the author has tried to complete this work by challenging her own limit. Even the writer says, “It has been the time of learning the lesson from the characters which had lived ahead of me”. The writer does not just limit the human instincts, which are easily shaken by desire or interests, in the historical frame of Japanese colonial era. Instead, she described the characters in a diverse angle to come up with modern trend. Diverse characters like main characters of Soo Nam and Chae Ryung, their partners of Gang Hwee and Junpei, and the nobleman, Yoon Hyung Man, and his wife, Mrs. Gwak, and the nanny Sool, etc show the original natures of human in their own situations and they will be remembered by readers with strong impression even with low importance in the novel.

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“Lee Geum-yi has a gift for taking little-known embers of history and transforming them into moving, compelling, and uplifting stories."

—Heather Morris, #1 New York Times bestselling author


Can't I Go Instead follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant, in the early 20th century. When the daughter’s suitor is arrested as a Korean Independence activist, and she is implicated during the investigation, she is quickly forced into marriage to one of her father’s Japanese employees and shipped off to the United States. At the same time, her maidservant is sent in her mistress's place to be a comfort woman to the Japanese Imperial army.


Years of hardship, survival, and even happiness follow, and in the aftermath of World War II, the women make their way home, where they must reckon with the tangled lives they've led, in an attempt to reclaim their identities, and find their place in an independent Korea.