Like A Fruit Tearing Its Way Out of a Flower by Jang Okgwan is a collection of poems selected by the poet from his almost 40-year, award winning career. With the lightness and wit of a comedian, Jang’s meditations on aging brilliantly capture the conflict between the unflinching power of the human mind against the unavoidable … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 15)
Capitalists Must Starve
Winner of the 2018 Hankyoreh Literature Award This work is a fictional account of real-life labour activist, Kang Juryong, who led a strike at the Pyongwon rubber factory in 1930s Pyongyang to protest working conditions. Set against the backdrop of Japanese-occupied Korea, Capitalists Must Starve follows a sharp-tongued, big-hearted heroine who dares to love, rebel, … [Read More]
Selected Works of Yi Ok
Selected Works of Yi Ok is a translation of Yi’s most important works, including Plain Verses, Short Odes of Kyǒnggŭm, and five short stories, including The Life of Student Sim, The Life of Lee Hong, The Life of Chang Boksŏn, The Life of Yu Kwangŏk, and The Life of Singer Song Silsol. Yi was a literary rebel in the Chosǒn society as Williams Wordsworth … [Read More]
A Time When I So Loved Someone
A large body of the poems in Lee Byung Ryul’s book is comprised of accounts of his own tangible life story, or his observation of other’s experience. He writes about things of deep concern to him–the love relationship between him and his beloved, trips abroad, friendship and enmity, a natural object like a persimmon, or … [Read More]
The Sensational Proletarian: Leftist Cultures in Colonial Korea
Starving ghosts, anguished farmers, and grieving mothers. Floating heads, gaunt bodies, and masses of bodily fluids. Such are the visceral sensations, exaggerated affects, and suffering subjects that characterized leftist Korean cultural production in the 1920s and 1930s. In popular fiction, print cartoons, reportage, and other emergent forms of mass culture, scenes detailing the spectacular bodily … [Read More]
Against the Chains of Utility: Sacrifice and Literature in 1970s and 1980s South Korea
The 1970s and 1980s were pivotal decades in South Korea, marked by rapid industrialization and urbanization. The language of sacrifice was constantly employed by the developmental state to justify its exploitation of workers and violation of countless civil rights as necessary for the nation’s economic growth and security. As a counter to this prevailing rhetoric, … [Read More]
Oxford Soju Club
The natural enemy of a Korean is another Korean. When North Korean spymaster Doha Kim is mysteriously killed in Oxford, his protégé, Yohan Kim, chases the only breadcrumb given to him in Doha’s last breath: “Soju Club, Dr. Ryu.” In the meantime, a Korean American CIA agent , Yunah Choi, races to salvage her investigation … [Read More]
Flatfish: Poems
In his poetry collection, Flatfish, Moon Tae-jun offers an aesthetic that emphasizes the author’s exploration of the inner self. At times sparse and allusive, his poems use blank space and other stylistic considerations to convey a voice and thought that ranges from the contemplative to the surreal and absurd. Moon’s poems suggest Buddhist ideologies, natural images, … [Read More]
No Hand Held Mine
An elderly Korean woman talking about being forced into sexual slavery during World War II. A modern Korean woman extricating herself from a failing relationship with an artist. Award-winning South Korean writer Kim Soom presents us with portraits of two women who couldn’t be more different but who both show resilience and compassion. No Hand Held … [Read More]
Island Ablaze and Other Stories
Island Ablaze and Other Stories is an anthology of thirteen stories—eleven from South Korea and two from North Korea—about their complicated relationships with their most important ally and enemy: the United States. Set in times ranging from colonial Korea to the new millennium, these stories offer a look into the many ways that the US empire shapes … [Read More]
Yun Dong-ju: A Critical Biography
Historian and novelist Song WooHye chronicles the life of Yun Dong-ju (1917-1945), one of the most beloved and important poets in the modern Korean literary canon, widely considered Korea’s “National Poet”. Beginning with the history of the North Gando region (now Yanbian, China), where Yun was born, and ending with facts behind the publication of … [Read More]
Art on Fire
A darkly humorous and compelling satire of the art world from the author of The Disaster Tourist. An Yiji’s career had been stalling for some time when a representative of the illustrious Robert Foundation offers her a spot on their all-expenses-paid artist residency in California. The residency has launched many famous artists’ careers, so she knows … [Read More]
Perfect Happiness
In this propulsive thriller, master of crime and suspense fiction You-Jeong Jeong, author of The Good Son, takes us to the Korean countryside in a domestic nightmare centered around the life and goals of Yuna Shin: wife, mother, sister–and covert narcissist. Everyone in Yuna’s life knows to tread carefully in her presence. Her husband dreads the … [Read More]
Lyrical Translation: The Creation of Modern Poetry in Colonial Korea
Lyrical Translation is a literary history of modern Korean poetry’s origins and its development through translation. As the use of Korean became increasingly restricted during the Japanese occupation, translation was not a choice but a necessity for higher education and intellectual labor. Yet it also had an expansive, creative function: Korean poets wielded it as an … [Read More]
Petty Lies
For readers who revelled in the toxic obsession of Butter and the addictive horror of Bat Eater Dear Jiwon, I’m writing to you regarding the murder of your son… Revenge is perhaps best served by letter. But letters get answered. And when a young tutor takes up the pen to write to her former employer … [Read More]
Failed Summer Vacation
“This summer vacation is not a complete failure quite yet – there’s still a lot left we can ruin.” The debut collection of genre-defying short stories from the Korean Literature and Society’s New Writer Award. Seven diversely wild and gripping stories – dreamy, dark, lyrical and wry – that expose the oddness of how we … [Read More]