Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners (Simon and Schuster, 2006) tells the story of Judith Lee, a 26 year old Korean American Yale grad living in NYC who has been raised to believe she is an
aristocrat. Having never learned to make herself likeable or useful, she incurs
monstrous debts. Judith´s seedy aunt introduces her to Madame Tartakov, a
beautiful, harpyish Russian emigre and former ballerina who faked Jewish ancestry
to gain asylum in the US, and who now runs a brothel of high-class courtesans out
of her East 62nd street townhouse. She will pay off all of Judith´s debts in exchange
for two years of service at said brothel–and she´ll have to tie her tubes. Seems like a
stiff price, but how could a snob like Judith possibly resist the opportunity to live
with girls descended from the likes of Vlad the Impaler and Ethelred the Unready?
Listen to a radio segment by Euny Hong on her novel, Kept.
Purchase here on Amazon.
