Author: Jeong Ji-a
Translated by: Son Jeongin
Publisher: Asia Publishers, 2020
Original title: 검은 방
Link to online store *
As this is an Asia Publishers title, it’s pretty difficult to obtain outside of Korea.
Text from the listing on the Kyobo website, fed through the Papago translation engine:
99 Years of Life, Unfinished Battle
In January 2020, Jeong Ji-ah’s “Black Room” was published as the 26th installment of K-fiction.Jung Ji-ah was born in Gurye, South Jeolla Province, and completed her Ph.D. in literature and art creation at Chung-Ang University. He started his work in 1990 with the feature film “Daughter of Peach Mountain,” published his novels “Happiness,” “Spring Light,” and “Conversation of the Forest.” He is one of Korea’s leading novelists who won the Lee Hyo-seok Literature Award, Han Moo-sook Literature Award, Novel of the Year, and Nogeun-ri Peace Literature Award. Jeong Ji-ah, who always fabricates the shadow of the past and present and shows both frustration and hope in it, is giving readers a deep insight into life again through this K-fiction “Black Room.”
The protagonist of “Black Room” is a ninety-nine-year-old old woman who enters Jirisan Mountain with her husband and fights in the southern army, losing her family and friends and living in prison. Even after leaving prison, the old woman’s life was not so green, but she lives by considering her 42-year-old daughter as the “present” and the “lantern” she should protect. The old woman, who has lived for ninety-nine years, realizes that the last moment of her life is near and enters the recollection of reflecting on her life is reflected on her life.