Mujin represents the limits reconfirmed. It represents not only the line between the positive and the negative, and between the modern and anti-modern or the un-modern, but also the line between the normal and the abnormal, and between life and death. And the “Record of a Journey to Mujin” is a record of the experience … [Read More]
Booklist: Korean literature in translation (page 37)
The Land of the Banished (Bi-lingual, Vol 5 – Division)
The Land of the Banished is a heart-rending tale of a man torn and warped by the hardships of the Korean War period. Born into a landless peasant family, Mahn-seok becomes embroiled in the class struggle that descends upon his village with the onset of the war. From his rise through the ranks of the … [Read More]
Mother’s Stake I (Bi-lingual, Vol 4 – Division)
No synopsis available [Read More]
Suni Samchon (Bi-lingual, Vol 3 – Division)
Hyun Ki-young was born on Jeju Island in 1941 and graduated from Seoul National University. He has served as the Managing Director of the National Literary Writers Association and as the President of the Korean Arts & Culture Foundation (2003). Hyun was also the director of the Committee for the Investigation of the April 3rd … [Read More]
Soul of Darkness (Bi-lingual, Vol 2 – Division)
No synopsis available. Available from Seoul Selection and on Kindle [Read More]
The Wounded (Bi-lingual, Vol 1 – Division)
No synopsis available [Read More]
River of Fire and Other Stories
O Chonghui is an immensely accomplished author, having won both the Yi Sang and Tongin awards, Korea’s most prestigious prizes for fiction. Translations of her works into Japanese, English, French, and other languages have earned her international acclaim, generating comparisons with Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Munro, and Virginia Woolf. O Chonghui crafts historically-rooted yet timeless … [Read More]
The Growth of a Shadow
From the publisher’s website: A selection of seventy-one poems by Korean author Taejoon Moon, these short, reflective poems shine a light on the ordinary aspects of everyday life through Moon’s keen observations of his surroundings combined with his use of rich detail. From a woman struggling with cancer to a flower dying in a pot, … [Read More]
Himalaya Poems
From the publisher’s website: In 1997, Korean poet Ko Un and a few companions spent forty days of rough traveling through Tibet, despite the fact that years before the poet had learned that an undiagnosed attack of tuberculosis in his youth had seriously damaged his lungs. Enduring terrible pain and near death, the poet survived … [Read More]
Blue Stallion: Poems of Yu Chi-whan
From the publisher’s website: This is the first anthology of the poetry of Yu Chi-whan, the foremost poet of twentieth-century Korea, in English translation. Translated by an admirer of Yu Chi-whan as man and poet, the poems selected for inclusion in this volume provide an overview of his poetic world. Appearing in the chronological order … [Read More]
Our Encounter: Selected Poems of Kyu-Hwa Kim
From the publisher’s website: Our Encounter contains fifty poems by Kyu-Hwa Kim that express real life situations in her own unique imagery: passing by, distance, love, loneliness, and anxiety, among others. The poems have some specific characteristics: well-structured, thoughtful and intellectual inspiration; common words that convey imaginary esthetic feeling with maturity; and good sense that … [Read More]
Somewhere Far Away: Poems of Moon Hee Kim
From the publisher’s website: Poems in this volume reflect the poet’s life in a myriad of ways like the light cast through a prism. The fifty-three poems collected in the book fall into two groups: those that reveal what the poet feels and thinks while living her daily life, and those that deal with what … [Read More]
There Remain Words to Say
From the publisher’s website: There Remain Words To Say includes select poems by Yoo An-Jin, 2010 recipient of the Ku Sang Literature Award. The volume contains a companion video CD with interviews, poems, and spoken and sung recitation, with English subtitles. [Read More]
Korean Tea Classics by Hanjae Yi Mok and the Venerable Cho-ui
Publisher description: Three ancient texts expressing the essence of the Korean Way of Tea are here translated into English for the first time. The oldest, ChaBu (Rhapsody to Tea), by Hanjae Yi Mok (1471-1498), is a sophisticated and delicate celebration of tea. The author was a scholar of considerable attainments who died far too early. … [Read More]
Instances: Selected Poems
From the publisher’s website: One of Korea’s most exacting and innovative poets, Jeongrye Choi writes a poetry that uncovers the strangeness of everyday experience. Alert and streetwise, but tuned into the undercurrent of things, Choi’s poetry creates environments at once familiar but dreamlike, marked by a preternatural clarity. Favoring imagistic condensation and formal trimness, Choi’s … [Read More]
Seopyeonje, the Southerners’ Songs
Sopyonje is a disturbing and haunting novel set in Korea s southern provinces and among the pansori singers, practitioners of the ancient storytelling art where blindness is seen to be an aid to creating pure art, being free of sensory distraction and temptation. A Song man causes his daughter blindness in order to keep her … [Read More]