From the author and translator of the National Book Award finalist and Booker Prize shortlisted Cursed Bunny, comes a new novel-in-ghost-stories, set in a mysterious research center that houses cursed objects, where those who open the wrong door might find it’s disappeared behind them, or that the echoing footsteps they’re running from are their own… The acclaimed Korean … [Read More]
Archives: Books (page 26)
Drums of War, Drums of Development: The Formation of a Pacific Ruling Class and Industrial Transformation in East and Southeast Asia, 1945-1980
In Drums of War, Drums of Development, Jim Glassman analyses the geopolitical economy of industrial development in East and Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era, showing how it was shaped by the collaborative planning of US and Asian elites. Challenging both neo-liberal and neo-Weberian accounts of East Asian development, Glassman offers evidence that the growth … [Read More]
Tastes Like War
A Korean American daughter’s exploration of food and family history, in order to understand her mother’s schizophrenia. Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where … [Read More]
Missionary Photography in Korea: Encountering the West through Christianity
The written word, in Korean and English, constantly struggles to interpret and describe the remarkable period of Korean history from the late nineteenth century to 1945, generally considered as marking the watershed between pre-modernity and the beginning of modernity. This remarkable time saw the end of the 500-year-old Joseon dynasty, brutal colonial occupation by Japan … [Read More]
How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life: Powerful Lessons on Belongingness, Healing, and Mental Health
Discover the power of how K-Dramas can benefit your mental health and provide a sense of belonging In How K-Dramas Can Transform Your Life, celebrated licensed mental health professional Jeanie Y. Chang explores the powerful interrelationship between Korean dramas, mental health, and belongingness. In the book, you’ll explore what K-Dramas have to teach us about our own … [Read More]
You For Me For You
As they attempt to flee the Best Nation in the World, North Korean sisters Minhee and Junhee are torn apart at the border. Each must race across time and space to be together again – navigating the perilous Land of the Free and the treacherous terrain of personal belief. Food has learned to sprint. Money … [Read More]
Wolf Play
A Korean boy is ushered into a new house by his adopted American father. This new house belongs to an American boxer and her wife. American father un-adopts boy by a single signature on a piece of paper. But just before he leaves the new house, ex-father discovers that the new parents, to whom he … [Read More]
Among the Dead
Ana is a Korean American who travels to Seoul in 1975 to retrieve her recently deceased father’s ashes. Luke is a young American soldier fighting in the jungles of Myanmar in 1944. Number Four is the name of a Korean comfort woman camping out on a bridge in Seoul in 1950, waiting for the return … [Read More]
Wild Goose Dreams
Nanhee is a North Korean defector whose family was left behind in North Korea. Minsung is a South Korean goose father whose family has left him behind in South Korea. Nanhee and Minsung find each other on the internet. A story about modern aspirations and their betrayals, Wild Goose Dreams explores the miracle of quiet intimacy among … [Read More]
The Apology
I exist now. Don’t tell me that I didn’t exist before. How should a nation apologise for the crimes of its past? Seoul, 1991. She kept her silence for over forty years. Then Sun-Hee spoke out, igniting a fire that burns to this day. Yuna is about to uncover a shameful family secret. Priyanka, the … [Read More]
Same Bed Different Dreams
A wild, sweeping novel that imagines an alternate secret history of Korea and the traces it leaves on the present—loaded with assassins and mad poets, RPGs and slasher films, pop bands and the perils of social media In 1919, far-flung patriots establish the Korean Provisional Government to protest the Japanese occupation of their country. This … [Read More]
Dawn of Labor
Dawn of Labor, at last translated into English, is the legendary South Korean poet Park Nohae’s first collection, published in 1984 when he was twenty-seven years old. Despite a government ban, the book sold a million copies and propelled Park Nohae as the generation’s leading resistance poet. Dawn of Labor is an enduring classic that shook a … [Read More]
The Burden of the Past: Problems of Historical Perception in Japan-Korea Relations
The Burden of the Past reexamines the dispute over historical perception between Japan and South Korea, going beyond the descriptive emphasis of previous studies to clearly identify the many independent variables that have affected the situation. From the history textbook debates, to the Occupation-period exploitation of “comfort women,” to the Dokdo/Takeshima territory dispute and Yasukuni Shrine … [Read More]
Seeds of Mobilization: The Authoritarian Roots of South Korea’s Democracy
South Korea is sometimes held as a dream case of modernization theory, a testament to how economic development leads to democracy. Seeds of Mobilization takes a closer look at the history of South Korea to show that Korea’s advance to democracy was not linear. Instead, while Korea’s national economy grew dramatically under the regimes of Park Chung … [Read More]
Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History
“Absorbing…Starry Field reminds us that even knowing where we came from won’t tell us where we’re going – but it will help along the way.” Susan Choi, National Book Award winning author of Trust Exercise A poignant memoir for readers who love Pachinko and The Return by journalist Margaret Juhae Lee, who sets out on a search for her family’s history … [Read More]
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Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant—a novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction. It’s as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly … [Read More]