A Year on Earth with Mr. Hell is Young Kim’s completely truthful account of a ten-month affair with the early punk instigator and writer Richard Hell.

Set in a Warholian swirl of art, music, and fashion, and spanning continents, Young Kim processes her grief over the 2010 death of her long-time partner Malcolm McLaren, the bon vivant conceptualizer of the Sex Pistols and icon of punk fashion design.

“So engrossing … I really did read it in one sitting. It takes place in a beautiful bubble of privilege … and it is glorious to be allowed to enter it because fuck the rest of our rotten, barren world in this moment.” —Bret Easton Ellis

“A forensic dissection of the author’s intense sexual relationship with a charismatic, frustrating, talented man, and you won’t have read anything quite like it. It’s breathtakingly frank, clear-eyed and gripping. We should all be grateful that Young Kim is able to write about the risks and delights of desire without fear or shame—and in cool prose that avoids the color purple and all shades of grey.—Nick Hornby

“The most graphically effective sex writing I've read in a long time. The same material as fiction wouldn't have such an immediate and even threatening effect: when someone is making something up, that gives the reader an out. This doesn't.” —Greil Marcus

“A fabulous escapist fantasy involving two cool people in amazing clothes having a fine time taking them off.  —Helen Rumbelow, London Times 

“The spirit of Anais Nin and Georges Bataille … a truly modern work of art.” —Matthew D’Ancona

“[Kim] has insisted on her voice being heard while contributing something truly exciting and thought provoking both to the history of punk and the future of sex writing.” —Sarah Bailey, Vogue (Greece)

“I loved it … so personal and casual, like I’m having a conversation with [the author].” —Liya Kebede, model, advocate, and designer

“Kim throws a spanner in the works of modish feminism, the authorship of porn, racial assumption, sexual politics, and the threadbare myth of the rock-n-roll Priapus.” —Michael Bracewell, critic and novelist

“I don’t want this to sound pathetic, but … every man should read this if he wants to understand what a woman is thinking during their relationship…” —Ed Vaizey, former UK Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries 

“It’s a dissociative kind of pleasure to be immersed in a story that feels like it has so little to do with the rhythms of my own life—almost as transporting as work of science fiction.” —Mya Spalter, LIBER: A Feminist Review

About the Author