Set in 1940s colonial Korea and Japanese-occupied Manchuria, Endless Blue Sky tells the love story between Korean writer Ilma and Russian dancer Nadia. The novel is both a thrilling melodrama set in glamorous locations that would shortly be tragically ravaged by war, and a bold piece of writing espousing new ideas on love, marriage, and … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 141)
The Human Jungle
Equal parts muckraking novel, transnational love story, and socially engaged panorama, Cho Chongnae’s The Human Jungle portrays China on the verge of becoming the world’s dominant economic force. Against a backdrop of rapidly morphing urban landscapes, readers meet migrant workers, Korean manufacturers out to save a few bucks, high-flying venture capitalists, street thugs, and shakedown … [Read More]
The Preview and Other Stories
From the publisher’s website: Cho Seon Jak (1940-) is a prolific South Korean writer of many novels and short stories. Many of his works have been adapted successfully as TV dramas and films, but very few of his works have been available in English till now. He presents an honest and frank view of the … [Read More]
The Amusing Life
The Amusing Life is a collection of over forty stories, sketches, vignettes and fables that search out the comical, even the absurd, aspects of everyday life. Along the way, the conventions and mores of work, art, nation, love and family are examined and made newly strange. Two rival countries race to raise the tallest flag. … [Read More]
Pavane for a Dead Princess
Park Min-gyu has been celebrated and condemned for his attacks upon what he perceives as the humorlessness of contemporary Korean literature. Pavane for a Dead Princess is his attack upon the beauty-fetish that reigns over popular culture, detailing the relationship between a man with matinee-idol good looks and “the ugliest woman of the century.” To … [Read More]
River of Fire and Other Stories
O Chonghui is an immensely accomplished author, having won both the Yi Sang and Tongin awards, Korea’s most prestigious prizes for fiction. Translations of her works into Japanese, English, French, and other languages have earned her international acclaim, generating comparisons with Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, and Virginia Woolf. O Chonghui crafts historically-rooted yet timeless … [Read More]
The Bird
After the death of their mother, U-mi and her little brother, U-il, are shuttled between relatives until their father retrieves them. He puts the children in the care of a young stepmother, fresh from a brothel, who looks after them during the week while he works at a remote building site. But the stepmother is … [Read More]
The Private Life of Plants
The Private Life of Plants is about the ways in which desire can both worsen and mitigate our flaws. We meet amputee sons whose mothers cart them from brothel to brothel; we meet brothers who love their brother’s lovers, and whose lovers in turn are stolen away by the husbands of their sisters. Sexuality in … [Read More]
The Reverse Side of Life
An extraordinary, highly acclaimed novel, revealing how the conflict of the secular and the divine manifests in the real world. Bak Bugil’s father is a genius. Everyone in the village expects him to pass the civil service examination and become a judge, but he hasn’t been seen since he left to study in Seoul. Bak … [Read More]
At Least we can Apologize
At Least We can Apologize focuses on an agency whose only purpose is to offer apologies–for a fee–on behalf of its clients. This seemingly insignificant service leads us into an examination of sin, guilt, and the often irrational demands of society. A kaleidoscope of minor nuisances and major grievances, this novel heralds a new comic … [Read More]
Mandala
Mandala, as the title suggests, deals with Buddhist themes. A depiction of the ten years Kim spent as a Buddhist monk and his eventual return to the secular world, the text addresses the conflict between individual enlightenment and redemption of the humankind as a whole. Ultimately, the author comes to the paradoxical conclusion that ‘finding … [Read More]
Meeting with my brother
Yi Mun-yol’s Meeting with My Brother is narrated by a middle-aged South Korean professor, also named Yi, whose father abandoned his family and defected to the North at the outbreak of the Korean War. Many years later, despite having spent most of his life under a cloud of suspicion as the son of a traitor, … [Read More]
Son of Man
One of the greatest living Korean writers here details the quest of a young seminary student seeking transcendence, running through many Western and East Asian theologies in the process. Deciding that Jesus was not truly “the son of man,” the student sets out to create his own alternative to Christ, and winds up dead. Soon, … [Read More]
Our Twisted Hero
When the twelve-year-old narrator of Our Twisted Hero moves to a small town and enrolls in the local school, he’s confident that his big city sophistication will establish him as a natural leader. He is shocked to find his new classmates and teacher under the spell of the class monitor. As the narrator sets out … [Read More]
The Poet
A young man’s determination to maintain his integrity in an unjust society forces him to endure a lonely and dangerous odyssey. When a governor to the King falls into rebel hands, he switches sides to save his skin. When later he is captured by royal troops, it is not only he that is condemned to … [Read More]
Your Paradise
One of the most revered novels of 20th-century literature in Korea, Your Paradise tells the story of a leper colony, where the lepers are outwardly treated with the greatest of kindnesses. Indeed, a new director is attempting the reintegrate the leper community and their families with the world outside the leper island. But suddenly he … [Read More]