Songsu Kim is orphaned when his father runs away from home and her mother takes poison. Raised by his uncle, he inherits the family pharmacy and later invests in a small fishing fleet. He marries Punshi of his uncle’s choosing and has five daughters, but curse is the undercurrent of their lives – the eldest … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 141)
The Library of Musical Instruments
The second short-story collection by Kim Jung-hyuk, the author of Penguin News, features a total of eight short stories, including Syncopation D which won the 2nd Kim You-jeong Literary Award in 2008. They represent the many sounds sampled by the author when he recorded over 600 kinds of musical instruments. Like instruments coming together in … [Read More]
The House with a Sunken Courtyard
An occasionally terrifying and always vivid portrayal of what it was like to live as a refugee immediately after the end of the Korean War. [Read More]
Kashil and Best Essays by Yi Kwang-su
Yi Kwang-su was one of the pioneers of modern Korean literature. Throughout his lifetime, 1892 to 1950, Yi wrote twenty-seven novels, numerous short stories, essays, and poems. Most were written during the Japanese colonization of Korea until 1945. In “Kashil and Best Essays by Yi Kwang-su,” Chung-Nan Lee Kim, Yi’s daughter, translates a series of … [Read More]
The Soil
A major, never before translated novel by the author of “Muj?ng / The Heartless”–often called the first modern Korean novel–“The Soil” tells the story of an idealist dedicating his life to helping the inhabitants of the rural community in which he was raised. Striving to influence the poor farmers of the time to improve their … [Read More]
Mujong (The Heartless): Yi Kwang-Su and Modern Literature
Yi Kwang-su (1892-1950) was one of the pioneers of modern Korean literature. When the serialization of Mujong (The Heartless) began in 1917, it was an immediate sensation, and it occupies a prominent place in the Korean literary canon. The Heartless is the story of a love triangle among three youths during the Japanese occupation. Yi … [Read More]
The Square
This groundbreaking classic of Korean modernism tackles the shattering effect of the division of Korea. Taking place just before the Korean War, it follows its protagonist as he travels to the North hoping to escape what he sees as the repressive right-wing regime in the South…only to find that a different sort of lie reigns … [Read More]
Reflections on a Mask: Two Novellas
Reflections on a Mask explores the disillusionment and search for identity of a young man in the post-Korean War era. A war veteran and writer, Min finds his life unfulfilled until he stumbles upon a mysterious organization that offers a procedure to aid in his search for his true nature. In the resultant hypnotic journey … [Read More]
Three Generations
Touted as one of Korea’s most important works of fiction, Three Generations (published in 1931 as a serial in Chosun Ilbo) charts the tensions in the Jo family in 1930s Japanese occupied Seoul. Yom’s keenly observant eye reveals family tensions withprofound insight. Delving deeply into each character’s history and beliefs, he illuminates the diverse pressures … [Read More]
Endless Blue Sky
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]
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]