Almond

Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia — his amygdalae, the almond-shaped clusters that register fear and anger, are unusually small, and he struggles to feel emotions or read them in others. Raised with fierce love by his mother and grandmother, who drill him in memorized rules for how to seem normal, he lives a quiet, sheltered life above the family's secondhand bookshop.

Then a random act of violence shatters that world, and Yunjae is left to navigate grief he cannot feel and a friendship with Gon, a furious, damaged boy who is his opposite in every way. As the two circle each other, Yunjae begins, slowly and against all prediction, to change.

Won-pyung Sohn's tender, award-winning debut is a coming-of-age story about empathy, monstrousness, and what it means to truly feel — quietly devastating and ultimately hopeful.