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Wayfarer: New Fiction by Korean Women

The eight writers in Wayfarer are among Korea’s best known authors and bring an astonishing breadth of experience and style to the fiction collected here. They explore love and independence, break the bounds of family, are punished and resurgent. A powerful collection that strikes at the heart of what it means to be modern, to be Asian and to be a woman, Wayfarer shows a country and a culture in the midst of earth-shattering change.

Park Wan-suh: Identical Apartments (1974)
Kim Chi-wŏn: Almaden (1979)
Seo Young-eun: Dear Distant Love (1983)
Oh Jung-Hee: Wayfarer (1983)
Kim Min-suk: Scarlet Fingernails (1987)
Ch’oe Yun: The Last of Hanak’o (1992)
Gong Ji-young: Human Decency (1994)
Gong Sun-ok: The Flowering of our Lives (1994)

Note: the collection was updated as The Future of Silence, with four stories added

Kim Ae-ran: “The Future of Silence”
Han Yujoo: “I Am the Scribe—Or Am I” aka “I ain’t necessarily so”
Kim Sagwa: “Today Is One of Those The-More-You-Move-the-Stranger-It-Gets Days, and It’s Simply Amazing”
Ch’on Un-yong: “Ali Skips Rope”

but three stories dropped

Ch’oe Yun: The Last of Hanako
Gong Ji-young: Human Decency
Kim Min-suk: Scarlet Fingernails

Read a review by Charles Montgomery here. Read a review by Tony Malone here. Entry on Goodreads.com here.

* Where the book is available from a number of sources, they are prioritised as follows: (1) Amazon UK site, or Bookshop.org for the more recent uploads (2) Amazon US site (3) Other sites in US or Europe, including second-hand outlets (4) LTI Korea, where the title is advertised as available from there (5) Onlines stores in Korea. Links to Bookshop.org and Amazon UK site contain an affiliate code which, should you make a purchase, gives a small commission to LKL at no additional cost to you.