Author: Park Wan-suh
Translated by: Soobin Kim
Publisher: Strangers Press, 2023
Original title: 복원되지 못한 것들을 위하여, 1995
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“I simply shrugged at her like a westerner, which did nothing to temper the bottled-up shame and simmering anger within me.”
A cranky woman of letters ends up investigating after a story submitted for a writing competition at a government sponsored magazine is pulled from publication by its author, and in doing so finds a story of her own.
About the Author
Park Wanseo was a South Korean writer. Born in what is now North Korea in 1931, she moved to Seoul to study literature. Her education was disrupted in the first month when the Korean War broke out, and she made a living working at an American military base. It wasn’t until 1970 that she became a published author. Park’s debut novel was inspired by her own memories of war, which she continued to draw from early in her career. Her later works explored the bourgeois concerns of middle-class Koreans and paint a portrait of women’s lives in a deeply patriarchal society. By the time of her death in 2011, Park Wanseo was one of Korea’s most revered and prolific writers, leaving behind over fifteen novels and ten short story collections.
About the Translator
Soobin Kim is a freelance journalist and was the winner of Strangers Press Korean Translation Competition, sponsored by LTI Korea, of which this publication forms the culmination. Formerly based in London, she now travels the world in search of stories. Find her on Twitter @soobinskim.
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