“Met her again today. I finally got my hands on her, but still can’t believe what she put me through all that time. Attaching her face here. K-Bot.jpg” A story of a young student’s tribulations and those of the people around her which says a lot about the process of coming of age in contemporary Korean society … [Read More]
Booklist: Korean literature in translation (page 10)
For That Which Cannot Be Restored
“I simply shrugged at her like a westerner, which did nothing to temper the bottled-up shame and simmering anger within me.” A cranky woman of letters ends up investigating after a story submitted for a writing competition at a government sponsored magazine is pulled from publication by its author, and in doing so finds a … [Read More]
Counterweight
For fans of the worlds of Philip K. Dick, Squid Game and Severance: An absorbing tale of corporate intrigue, political unrest, unsolved mysteries, and the havoc wreaked by one company’s monomaniacal endeavor to build the world’s first space elevator — from one of South Korea’s most revered science fiction writers, whose identity remains unknown. On the fictional … [Read More]
Another Person
Vacuum cleaner bitch. When Jina sees this anonymous comment on a forum it forces her out of her stupor. It is posted on a website dissecting her public allegations of workplace sexual assault, the backlash to which forced her to quit her job. She has spent months glued to her laptop screen, junk-food packaging piling … [Read More]
Mater 2-10
International Booker–nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story — an epic, multi-generational tale that threads together a century of Korean history. Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from … [Read More]
Phantom Pain Wings
Winged ventriloquy—a powerful new poetry collection channeling the language of birds by South Korea’s most innovative contemporary writer This book is about the realization of / I-thought-bird-was-part-of-me-but-Iwas-part-of-bird sequence / It’s a delayed record of such a sequence. An iconic figure in the emergence of feminist poetry in South Korea and now internationally renowned, Kim Hyesoon … [Read More]
Togani
Atmospheric and fast-paced, this novel of manners set in a provincial South Korean city leads readers through the silent corridors of a school for hearing-impaired children and the city’s foggy back streets and murky centers of power to a stirring courtroom climax. Gong Jiyoung’s Togani (The Crucible), published in Korean in 2009, is based on a historic case … [Read More]
The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories
This eclectic, moving and richly enjoyable collection is the essential introduction to Korean literature. Journeying through Korea’s dramatic recent past, from the Japanese occupation and colonial era to the devastating war between north and south and the rapid, disorienting urbanization of later decades, The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories captures a hundred years of vivid storytelling. … [Read More]
Greek Lessons
A powerful novel of the saving grace of language and human connection, from the celebrated author of The Vegetarian In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by … [Read More]
Painter of the Wind
A heart-wrenching and gripping novel with over a million copies sold! Painter of the Wind is a masterful novel that was adapted into a popular, award winning South Korean TV series. This gem of a book also delights readers with a rare collection of thirty-four colour paintings, including Shin Yun-bok’s Portrait of a Beauty and Kim Hong-do’s Wrestling. Set … [Read More]
The Specters of Algeria
A group of dramatists that commit what was a subversive act during the South Korean military dictatorships of the twentieth century – distributing copies of Karl Marx’s only surviving play, The Specters of Algeria. The consequences of the brutal crackdown by the authorities would set the directions of the lives of two children of the … [Read More]
I Went to See My Father
An instant bestseller in Korea and the follow up to the international bestseller, Please Look After Mom; centering on a woman’s efforts to reconnect with her aging father, uncovering long-held family secrets. Two years after losing her daughter in a tragic accident, Hon finally returns to her home in the countryside to take care of … [Read More]
Walking Practice
Squid Game meets The Left Hand of Darkness meets Under the Skin in this radical literary sensation from South Korea about an alien’s hunt for food that transforms into an existential crisis about what it means to be human. After crashing their spacecraft in the middle of nowhere, a shapeshifting alien find themself stranded on an unfamiliar planet and disabled … [Read More]
Last Night, in My Dream (K-Fiction 032)
A narrative of hurt and repentance through the stories of three generations of women. In her author’s note, Jung says that she wrote this novel because she wanted to “tell a story about illness, money, and grace”. The novel tells the story of three generations of mothers and daughters, starting with the maternal grandmother, who … [Read More]
100°C: South Korea’s 1987 Democracy Movement
What does it take for ordinary citizens to risk everything to protest living under a repressive government? What takes them beyond the brink, to the “boiling point”? In his graphic novel 100°C, celebrated webtoon and comics artist Choi Kyu-sok sheds a light on these questions by examining the lives of one family caught up in the great … [Read More]
Whale
A woman sells her daughter to a passing beekeeper for two jars of honey. A baby weighing fifteen pounds is born in the depths of winter but named “Girl of Spring”. A storm brings down the roof of a ramshackle restaurant to reveal a hidden fortune. These are just some of the events that set … [Read More]