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  • Published: 26 August 2025
  • ISBN: 9781787304857
  • Imprint: Harvill Secker
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $34.99

Roadkill

  • Amil




An exhilarating speculative short story collection from South Korean author Amil, transporting readers to new worlds

We had always been rare and mysterious creatures. We’d been taught this ever since we were children.

With strong roots in feminist science fiction and fantasy, Roadkill’s exhilarating stories transport us to strange new worlds.

In a near future where women are an endangered minority, two young friends try to break free from a facility designed for those few who can still give birth. Every year in a secluded seaside village, a maiden is sacrificed to a divine sea serpent. In a daring thriller about a woman’s fragmentation of her self, a writer in an abusive marriage becomes obsessed with a mysterious woman in a purple dress. The last female shaman of an indigenous tribe tells her stories to a visiting research team. And in South Korea’s Alps Grand Park, the residents exist in an exclusive world dominated by giant air purifier towers as others are left to live in the shade.

The women in these stories find themselves trapped – by circumstance, society or tradition – as they fight for a means of escape. This sweeping and subversive collection celebrates their strength and their courage, their desire for independence and self-expression.

Translated by Archana Madhavan

  • Published: 26 August 2025
  • ISBN: 9781787304857
  • Imprint: Harvill Secker
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $34.99

Praise for Roadkill

I loved how unsettled each of these stories made me feel, and how Amil never neatly tidies away that unease, choosing instead to leave readers with plenty to contemplate, and plenty to keep them up at night. I loved, too, the eerie beauty of the worlds she creates, the complicated women at the stories’ hearts, and the often surprising way each story explores and explodes conventional ideas of entrapment and escape

Naomi Ishiguro, author of COMMON GROUND

This thrilling and unsettling story collection pulls no punches. It might introduce us to strange new worlds, but the themes at its heart are disturbingly close to home. I loved this collection

Megan Bradbury, author of EVERYONE IS WATCHING

Roadkill is a radically brilliant collection. These uncanny fables shine a spotlight on the many ways women have been kept down, with nimble sentences that belie the fury thrumming beneath. Reading this book made me want to spark trouble and overthrow the system

Jane Flett, author of FREAKSLAW