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Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

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Hot Air Balloon (K-Fiction 003)

Author:
Translated by:
Publisher: , 2014
Original title: 애드벌룬
Link to online store *

“Son, a young writer who made her debut as writer less than a few years ago, is aptly described by a line from Hot Air Balloon: ‘sympathetic toward other people’s grief and exercises great self-control.’ Through her sentences so equable and dry that they seem determined to banish all feelings they could carry, readers carefully learn the language of the others engraved on the pages with a deliberate nib. Her stories are a delicate lesson in the method of revealing the pain and death of others and how the living (co)exist with these deaths.”

She yelled at the door, “You don’t like me because I’m ugly, do you?” After a few moments, he emerged from the room. He held her tight. His warm breath and intoxication was palpable on her skin. “No,” he crooned. For a while, they held each other and did not say a word. “Strange,” she said, her arms wrapped around his waist. “What?” “That letter.” “What about it?” “It said, ‘I think it was me who should have died then.’”

Not readily available in the UK

* Where the book is available from a number of sources, they are prioritised as follows: (1) Amazon UK site, or Bookshop.org for the more recent uploads (2) Amazon US site (3) Other sites in US or Europe, including second-hand outlets (4) LTI Korea, where the title is advertised as available from there (5) Onlines stores in Korea. Links to Bookshop.org and Amazon UK site contain an affiliate code which, should you make a purchase, gives a small commission to LKL at no additional cost to you.