Etna
By Paul Yoon
Scribner, August 4, 2026
Beloved author and winner of The Story Prize Paul Yoon is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.
Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home—to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there.
Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that proves to be just as precarious in peacetime as it was in war. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?
This is a novel about the power of an idea, about never giving up, and ultimately about finding hope in the direst of times.
Selected Praise for The Hive and the Honey
“A slim but exquisite collection...that is breathtaking in scope, detailing the persistence of imperialism, war, poverty, and dislocation across generations... A masterpiece in restraint... Yoon expertly telescopes between the long view and the close-up.” —May-lee Chai, The New York Times, Shortlist
”Absorbing... Yoon details fully realized and flawed characters attempting to wade through the complexities of immigrant life...[and] asks urgent questions about what it really means to belong somewhere.” —TIME, 100 Must-Read Books of 2023
”In a quietly powerful short story collection, Paul Yoon creates a kaleidoscopic portrait of the Korean diaspora. In these stories, Yoon’s characters struggle to find a place for themselves in a world where life can be capricious and harsh but sometimes marked by grace.” —The New Yorker, The Best Books We Read This Week
“In seven virtuosic stories centering characters that include a 17th-century samurai and a contemporary New York immigrant, Yoon captures scenes of the Korean diaspora.” —Vanity Fair, 13 New Books to Read This Month
“Paul Yoon masterfully explores the shared history, displacement, alienation, and the lasting effects of war.... Yoon’s lean and cutting prose dissects truth and inheritance, interweaves haunting tales with mundane lives, and reveals far-flung characters searching for home.”
—Electric Literature, "Electric Lit's Best Short Story Collections of 2023
“Yoon’s new short story collection is another spare, controlled masterpiece, comprising seven exquisite stories highlighting the Korean diaspora scattered across time and oceans.” —Booklist, starred review
“Expansive, haunting, and intimate, Paul Yoon’s new short story collection The Hive and the Honey shows Yoon at the height of his powers. Following characters of the Korean diaspora throughout history and across geographies, the collection’s stories ask essential questions about how we build families and homes.” —PEN America
“The Hive and the Honey comprises seven masterful short stories that span 500 years of Korean diaspora... Yoon’s grandfather escaped North Korea, and the author’s works deal fittingly with belonging, home, immigration, and identity.”
—TIME, The 15 New Books You Should Read in October
“Yoon’s haunting, evocative new collection centers on themes of migration, displacement, collective memory, and the Korean diaspora.”
—The New York Times, 34 Works of Fiction to Read This Fall
“A complex look at alienation, identity, and the lasting effects of war.... Yoon’s attention to historic detail makes these tales of displaced people all the more affecting.” —TIME, 36 Most Anticipated Books for Fall 2023
“Yoon carefully mingles the extraordinary with the everyday, evoking the natural world with simple yet striking language… This is an elegant exploration of life’s brutal and beautiful moments.” —Publishers Weekly
“The third short story collection (his first since 2017’s The Mountain) from Young Lions Fiction Award-winner and Guggenheim fellow Yoon spans cultures and centuries, roving from small town New York, where a formerly incarcerated man tries to start a new life, to the Edo Period in Japan, where a Samurai escorts an orphan boy back to his countrymen.” —Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2023
“Stories that echo with the loss, regret, and hope of migrants and nomads.”
—Kirkus
“Yoon weaves complex tales of belonging and identity, of cultures clashing and building upon each other to create the multitudes that exist within communities.”
—Book Riot
“The Hive and the Honey is much more than an exquisite, beautiful collection of short stories. Yoon roves geographic and historical points, catching stories of the Korean diaspora and, in the best way, the way of great literature, locates narratives that would disappear forever if he didn't find them, characters far from home, longing for home, finding ways to reconcile and embrace complex new landscapes. This is a book about all of us. If you let each of these wonderful stories into your soul, you’ll feel the way I felt when I read this collection. I was in the hands of a vivid, powerfully honed imagination and came out better, more human, having learned something new about the world.” —David Means, author of Two Nurses, Smoking
“The stories in The Hive and the Honey are geographically and temporally diverse. Each opens an inviting door to a seemingly calm moment in life, only to cast the readers into the deep and murky undercurrent of history. Amid violence are moments of gentleness; underneath darkness and bleakness are glimpses of light and humor. Yoon is a beautiful and beguiling writer, and should be called a national—or, international—treasure!” —Yiyun Li, Author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
About the Author
Paul Yoon is the author of six works of fiction: Etna; Once the Shore, a New York Times Notable Book; Snow Hunters, winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, an NPR Best Book of the Year; Run Me to Earth, a TIME Must-Read Books of 2020 selection also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; and The Hive and the Honey, winner of the 20th Annual Story Prize and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates prize.
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