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Generator
In this first novel by Korean/Swiss journalist Rinny Gremaud, a woman's search for father, a former US engineer at international nuclear power facilities, provides the backdrop to this compelling personal journey that takes the reader not only into her emotional turmoil, but explores the story of nuclear power generation from its origins in the post-WWII era to the present. With richly descriptive vignettes of the dormant or abandoned sites she visits, from Taiwan to Wales to midwestern United States, the narrator reimagine her father's life on this emotional journey in search of her own identity and sense of belonging in the world.
96 pages, Paperback
Published January 7, 2026
28 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 9, 2026
Generator is a restrained, intelligent work of autofiction that transforms nuclear power plants into unlikely emotional landmarks sites where personal history, geopolitical ambition, and inherited silence intersect.
Rinny Gremaud begins with an arresting fact: she was born in 1977 in a nuclear power plant in South Korea. When the reactor that framed her entry into the world is decommissioned decades later, the closure triggers a reckoning not only with the end of the nuclear utopia, but with the absence of her biological father, a British engineer who never acknowledged her existence.
Rather than offering a conventional search for the father narrative, Gremaud constructs something more oblique and quietly radical. The father remains largely unreachable, defined by silence and distance. In his place, the narrator follows his professional trail: power stations in Wales, Taiwan, South Korea, and the American Midwest. The result is a pilgrimage not toward a man, but toward systems machines built to promise control, progress, and permanence, all of which ultimately prove fragile.
What gives Generator its power is tone. Gremaud writes with precision, irony, and remarkable emotional restraint. The prose resists sentimentality, allowing gaps, unanswered letters, and imagined biographies to carry as much weight as documented fact. In inventing a life for the father who never claimed her, she exposes the strange intimacy of speculation and the freedom it can bring.
The book’s brilliance lies in its metaphorical layering. Nuclear plants become stand-ins for paternal absence: immense, carefully engineered, and dangerous when misunderstood. Gremaud’s investigation is as much about energy emotional, political, historical as it is about lineage.
Generator is a subtle, haunting meditation on origins, inheritance, and the stories we build when truth withholds itself. It will resonate with readers drawn to literary nonfiction that values nuance over revelation and silence over spectacle.
Rinny Gremaud begins with an arresting fact: she was born in 1977 in a nuclear power plant in South Korea. When the reactor that framed her entry into the world is decommissioned decades later, the closure triggers a reckoning not only with the end of the nuclear utopia, but with the absence of her biological father, a British engineer who never acknowledged her existence.
Rather than offering a conventional search for the father narrative, Gremaud constructs something more oblique and quietly radical. The father remains largely unreachable, defined by silence and distance. In his place, the narrator follows his professional trail: power stations in Wales, Taiwan, South Korea, and the American Midwest. The result is a pilgrimage not toward a man, but toward systems machines built to promise control, progress, and permanence, all of which ultimately prove fragile.
What gives Generator its power is tone. Gremaud writes with precision, irony, and remarkable emotional restraint. The prose resists sentimentality, allowing gaps, unanswered letters, and imagined biographies to carry as much weight as documented fact. In inventing a life for the father who never claimed her, she exposes the strange intimacy of speculation and the freedom it can bring.
The book’s brilliance lies in its metaphorical layering. Nuclear plants become stand-ins for paternal absence: immense, carefully engineered, and dangerous when misunderstood. Gremaud’s investigation is as much about energy emotional, political, historical as it is about lineage.
Generator is a subtle, haunting meditation on origins, inheritance, and the stories we build when truth withholds itself. It will resonate with readers drawn to literary nonfiction that values nuance over revelation and silence over spectacle.
January 8, 2026
Generator is a quietly arresting debut that fuses personal reckoning with global history, transforming nuclear power from an abstract system into something deeply human. Rinny Gremaud’s spare, precise prose carries the reader across continents and abandoned nuclear sites, each location resonating with emotional residue as much as technological legacy. The novel’s strength lies in its restraint: the narrator’s search for her estranged father unfolds through atmosphere, memory, and place rather than overt exposition, allowing absence itself to become a central presence.
What makes Generator especially compelling is its ability to hold multiple scales at once. Gremaud deftly intertwines the post World War II rise of nuclear energy with an intimate exploration of identity, inheritance, and belonging. The dormant facilities the narrator visits mirror the emotional silences she confronts, creating a powerful metaphorical symmetry. The result is a lyrical, reflective work that lingers one that will resonate with readers interested in literary fiction, science and society, and stories where history quietly shapes the present.
What makes Generator especially compelling is its ability to hold multiple scales at once. Gremaud deftly intertwines the post World War II rise of nuclear energy with an intimate exploration of identity, inheritance, and belonging. The dormant facilities the narrator visits mirror the emotional silences she confronts, creating a powerful metaphorical symmetry. The result is a lyrical, reflective work that lingers one that will resonate with readers interested in literary fiction, science and society, and stories where history quietly shapes the present.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews