As last year the Wimbledon Book Fest is collaborating with KCCUK to present a mini Korean strand in the festival. The festival also includes a screening of Park Chan-wook’s No Other Choice. And Korean Dancheong decorative traditions – together with Pakistani Truck Art – inspires the colourful visual identity of the festival this year.
Miye Lee on Healing Fiction
Saturday 17 October 2026, 1:00 pm | £ 12.50 | @Wimbledon Library | Book tickets
One of the writers at the heart of the genre discusses the rise of Korean healing fiction, the lives of her characters, the work of translators, and the deep human appetite – wherever we live – for stories that make space for kindness.
Miye Lee is the author of The Dallergut Dream Department Store, the magical-realist phenomenon that has sold millions of copies worldwide. Her shop, where dreams are bought and sold, has become the defining image of the healing-fiction boom.
Ela Lee, Defne Suman & Catherine Cho
Sunday 18 October 2026, 5:30 pm | £ 12.50 | @Wimbledon Library | Book tickets
The stories families keep, the histories that shape us, and the long reach of the past are up for discussion in this event which explores how fiction can give voice to what goes unspoken across generations.
Defne Suman talks about her epic story, The Last Apartment in Istanbul, that weaves its way across seven decades of an ever-changing Istanbul. Catherine Cho presents her debut novel The Devoted, an emotionally transportive story of family and fate in which a young Korean woman becomes entangled in the world of a notorious crime organisation. Ela Lee brings Minbak, a sweeping story of three generations of women crossing continents in search of truth, forgiveness and a hidden piece of South Korean history.
‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past.’ – William Faulkner
Film Screening- No Other Choice
Friday 23 October 2026, 7:30 pm | £ 12.50 | @Rutherford Theatre, Wimbledon High School | Book tickets
The leading Korean director Park Chan-wook is known for using black humour for brutal subject matter. This film uses dark satire to focus on a man’s love and need for his job, going to any lengths to stay in his profession, in this case the paper industry when AI is looking to replace him. It was nominated for both the Golden Globes and the Oscars.
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You might also find Korean feminist issues discussed in the following session:
Tahmima Anam & Megha Mohan: Stories of Female Empowerment
Saturday 24 October 2026, 2:00 pm | £ 15.00 – £ 18.50 | @Rutherford Theatre, Wimbledon High School | Book tickets
This inspiring conversation brings together two authors that imagine and confront through fiction and non-fiction what happens when women challenge the structures that seek to contain them.
Megha Mohan, BBC global correspondent, has gone in search of feminist movements from South Korea to elder women co-housing in Paris and the Rain Queens of South Africa. She is joined by Tahmima Anam, author of the Bengal Trilogy, whose searing new novel Uprising inspired by the real women of Banishanta, Bangladesh turns collective resignation into ferocious revolt on a desolate, sinking island.