The Long Road is a moving, elegiac short novel that examines the processes that caused idealistic young Koreans to depart for overseas during the 1990s in the wake of their experiences under Korea’s darker days of military dictatorship in the 1980s. The story centres on a trio of men: Han-Yeong, who although initially attracted to … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 147)
A Moment’s Grace: Stories from Korea in Transition
A Moment’s Grace presents short stories that depict the core of Korea’s modernization, from Liberation in 1945 to the Seoul Olympics in 1988. The stories here provide a view of the process through the eyes of ordinary people as they were affected by the historical and social forces that formed modern Korea. A separate background … [Read More]
Diary of a Murderer, and other stories
Kim Byeongsu is losing his mind. Quite literally. He keeps forgetting the little things in life, like basic words, whether or not he has a dog, the last time he killed someone… In his prime, Byeongsu was one of the best murderers around, spending years obsessively trying to perfect his technique, only killing in the … [Read More]
I have the right to destroy myself
In the fast-paced, high-urban landscape of Seoul, C and K are brothers who have fallen in love with the same woman – Se-yeon – who tears at both of them as they all try desperately to find real connection in an atomized world. A spectral, nameless narrator haunts the edges of their lives as he … [Read More]
I Hear Your Voice
In South Korea, underground motorcycle gangs attract society’s castoffs. They form groups of hundreds and speed wildly through cities at night. For Jae and Dongyu, two orphans, their motorcycles are a way of survival. Jae is born in a bathroom stall at the Seoul Express Bus Terminal. And Dongyu is born mute–unable to communicate with … [Read More]
Readymade Bodhisattva
Readymade Bodhisattva: The Kaya Anthology of South Korean Science Fiction presents the first book-length English-language translation of science and speculative fiction from South Korea, bringing together 13 classic and contemporary stories from the 1960s through the 2010s. From the reimagining of an Asimovian robot inside the walls of a Buddhist temple and a postapocalyptic showdown … [Read More]
Black Flower
In 1904, as the Russo-Japanese War deepened, Asia was parceled out to rising powers and the Korean empire was annexed by Japan. Facing war and the loss of their nation, more than a thousand Koreans left their homes to seek possibility elsewhere—in unknown Mexico. After a long sea voyage, these emigrants—thieves and royals, priests and … [Read More]
Your Republic Is Calling You
A foreign film importer, Gi-yeong is a family man with a wife and daughter. An aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi, he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Suddenly he receives a mysterious email, a directive seemingly from the home office. He has one day … [Read More]
The Girl who Wrote Loneliness
The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness is a stark and lyrical work that follows a teen-aged girl who has just arrived in Seoul to work in a factory while struggling to achieve her dream of finishing school and becoming a writer. Shin sets the this complex and nuanced coming of age story against the backdrop of … [Read More]
I’ll be right there
Set in 1980s South Korea amid the tremors of political revolution, I’ll Be Right There follows Jung Yoon, a highly literate, 20-something-year-old woman, as she recounts her tragic personal history as well as those of her three intimate college friends. When Yoon receives a distressing phone call from her ex-boyfriend after eight years of separation, … [Read More]
Please Look After Mother
Please Look After Mother is the story of So-nyo, a wife and mother, who has lived a life of sacrifice and compromise. In the past she suffered a stroke, leaving her vulnerable and often confused. Now, travelling from the Korean countryside to the Seoul of her grown-up children, So-nyo is separated from her husband when … [Read More]
The Court Dancer
Based on a remarkable true story, the New York Times bestselling author of Please Look After Mom brilliantly images the life of Yi Jin, an orphan who would fall under the affections of the Empress and become a jewel in the late Joseon Court. When a novice French diplomat arrives for an audience with the … [Read More]
A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction
A Ready Made Life is the first volume of early modern Korean fiction to appear in English in the U.S. Written between 1921 and 1943, the sixteen stories are an excellent introduction to the riches of modern Korean fiction. They reveal a variety of settings, voices, styles, and thematic concerns, and the best of them, … [Read More]
Land of Exile: Contemporary Korean Fiction (expanded edition)
From the publisher’s website: An anthology of contemporary Korean fiction including: “The Wife and Children”; “The Post Horse Curse”; “Mountains”; “Kapitan Ri”; “The Winter”; and “A Dream of Good Fortune.” LKL adds: the collection contains the following stories: Ch’ae Man-Sik: The Wife and Children (1948) Kim Dong-ni: The Post Horse Curse (1948) Hwang Sun-won: Mountains … [Read More]
The Red Room
Publisher description: Modern Korean fiction is to a large extent a literature of witness to the historic upheavals of twentieth-century Korea. Often inspired by their own experiences, contemporary writers continue to show us how individual Koreans have been traumatized by wartime violence—whether the uprooting of whole families from the ancestral home, life on the road … [Read More]
Evening Proposal
Evening Proposal is a collection of eight stories about the grim and often faceless nature of urban life. Faintly reminiscent of Franz Kafka, the stories range from a man who discovers that his job performance has no significance while taking refuge in taking care of an abandoned rabbit to a man who finally expresses his … [Read More]