YOUNG KIM / A Year on Earth with Mr. Hell

A Year on Earth With Mr. Hell is the critically acclaimed début memoir by Young Kim.

This book explores a liberated woman’s erotic experience in a clandestine affair without the clichéd political and cultural stereotypes of modern gender roles. 

Set in New York, the book is a completely truthful and explicit account about the first ten months of a romantic affair Kim conducted with legendary punk rocker and writer, Richard Hell, starting in the winter of 2016. It is unique in that while it is a diary in its cinematic sweep, it reads like a novel. Because it was written as the unpredictable affair unfolded, there was always great uncertainty to the realisation of this “daybook-cum- docudrama.”

Known for his own erotic writing, Richard Hell instigated the book inadvertently by asking Kim to write something sexually provocative about their first night together. What resulted was an erotic relationship fuelled not only by carnal chemistry but also literary synergy. 

Set in a Warholian swirl in the worlds of art, music, and fashion, spanning continents, the narrative is as much about Kim’s processing her grief for Malcolm McLaren (most famous for his role as the conceptualizer, art director, and manager of the Sex Pistols, as well as designing the punk style with his then-partner Vivienne Westwood), her romantic and business partner for the last 12 years of his life until his untimely death in 2010.

The design of the book, by Studio Marie Lusa, is an homage to Olympia Press, the notorious Parisian publisher of erotic and banned books like Lolita, The Story of O, Naked Lunch and Alexander Trocchi’s Helen and Desire, which was the inspiration behind one of McLaren’s iconic punk designs for SEX: the “I Groaned With Pain” T-shirt.

A Year on Earth with Mr. Hell has garnered accolades from none other than Bret Easton Ellis, Greil Marcus, Matthew D’Ancona, Edmund White, Michael Bracewell and Helen Rumbelow of The Times.

ABOUT YOUNG KIM

Young Kim grew up in Long Island, New York, before studying history at Yale University. After teaching English for one year in the former East Germany, she then completed the first year of law school at N.Y.U. before abandoning it in favor of her passion for the creative world. This led her to Paris to study fashion. During her second year in Paris, she met Malcolm McLaren and immediately commenced a romantic relationship. After a stint in the fashion world, including as an editor of V Magazine/ Visionaire, she started working exclusively with McLaren in 2000 as his producer and creative partner on projects in art, fashion, music, film, theatre, advertising, and media, until his death in 2010. As the sole executor and heir of the Estate of Malcolm McLaren, she continues to work in the same worlds as well as writing. She has published pieces in Vogue US, Holiday, Drugstore Culture, GQ UK, Liber, A Rabbit’s Foot, The Evening Standard and Gagosian Quarterly. She lives between Paris and New York.