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Selected publications by Yi Mun-yol

Short stories in anthologies

Translations available online

  • Winter that Year (그해 겨울, 1979), Words Without Borders 2014
  • An Anonymous Island (익명의 섬, 1982), New Yorker 2011

In pictures: London Book Fair, day 2

Day 2 of the London Book Fair, in which: Han Kang said very nice things about her translator (Deborah Smith) and Shin Kyung-sook called hers her “twin soul”; We discovered that Kim Young-ha was about to start writing a historical novel set in the Joseon dynasty, only to find out that Kim Insuk had already … [Read More]

Book review: Yi Mun-yol — Our Twisted Hero

Yi Mun-yol: Our Twisted Hero Originally published 1987 Translated by Kevin O’Rourke Available on Kindle (Minumsa, 2012) or hard copy (Hyperion Books, 2001) Moving to the provinces from a school in Seoul in which the social hierarchy was one he had lived with all his life, our twelve-year-old hero Han Pyongt’ae is faced with a … [Read More]

A Yi Mun-yol short story in the New Yorker

A Yi Mun-yol short story (An Anonymous Island) is published in The New Yorker — a first! wp.me/p1mFzB-cJ. Via @subjobjverb. Translation is by Heinz Insu Fenkl. Update: LKL article on the short story and Im Kwon-taek’s screen adaptation of it (Village in the Mist – 안개 마을, 1983) can be found here. [Read More]

Yi Mun-yol: the Poet

A novel based on the life of a 19th century poet, Kim Sakkat, exploring his development as an artist against the backdrop of the insurrection by Hong Kyong-rae in the north-west. I was reminded of this book when watching the Im Kwon-taek film Chihwaseon because of its storyline of a wandering artist. See also review … [Read More]