Author: Lee Sun-won
Translated by: Michelle Jooeun Kim
Publisher: Asia Publishers, 2014
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The author has such a profound respect for all life, treating animals as characters of their own, that he was led to say about his wish to write about animals: “I wait for the day I can write properly about his sad life.” If such is his compassion for an animal that has lived a life of sadness, his compassion for people who have gone through much more is expressed through the lives of his human characters, such as the uncle in Looking for Horse, the father’s second cousin in Meditating about a Jellyfish, and Ajae in Long Road. Lee Soon-won’s world “beyond the big mountain pass” is one surrounded by compassion; it is a place where all life coexists in harmony, following the order of Nature.
– Jeong Ho-woong (literary critic)
Looking for a Horse also a highly aesthetic short story in its own right. The symbolism of the mule and the horse, coupled with the intertextuality of the story with a classic work, emphasizes the role of language in novels. This story will be remembered as a work that, through literary devices, has embodied the significance of reconciliation in the growth of a young boy into a mature being.
– from the afterword
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