A 1991 bestseller in South Korea, where it was serialized in that country’s largest newspaper, Little Pilgrim is a tale of adventure and self-discovery in the tradition of Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. Based on the Gandavyuha, one of Buddhism’s deepest and most challenging scriptures, Ko Un’s Little Pilgrim relates the heroic journey of Sudhana, who sets … [Read More]
Booklist: Korean literature in translation (page 44)
The Reverse Side of Life
An extraordinary, highly acclaimed novel, revealing how the conflict of the secular and the divine manifests in the real world. Bak Bugil’s father is a genius. Everyone in the village expects him to pass the civil service examination and become a judge, but he hasn’t been seen since he left to study in Seoul. Bak … [Read More]
A Shijo Poet at the Court of King Sonjo
“A Shijo Poet at the Court of King Sonjo: The Pine River Songs” is a translation of Songgang kasa, Chong Ch’ol’s (1536-1593) famous collection of Korean songs. The translations are by Kevin O’Rourke, one of the foremost translators of Korean literature into English in the world today. The volume includes a biographical sketch of the … [Read More]
River of Life, River of Hope
River of Life, River of Hope is the first substantial survey in English of the work of one of Korea’s most revered and influential modern poets, Pak Tu-jin. Pak helped free modern Korean literature in the 1940s from its preoccupation with decadence and fashionable literary trends, finding a new voice rooted in nature and Korean … [Read More]
And So Flows History
From the publisher’s website: A deeply compelling saga of love, jealously, honor, and greed, And So Flows History (역사는 흐른다, 1947) depicts the relentless power of exterior forces on the individual lives of three generations of the illustrious Cho family–from the waning years of the Choson dynasty in the late nineteenth century to the tumultuous … [Read More]
Flowers Long for Stars
No information available [Read More]
Trees on a Slope
Hwang Sun-won (1915-2000) is one of modern Korea’s masters of narrative prose. Trees on a Slope (1960) is his most accomplished novel – one of the few Korean novels to describe in detail the physical and psychological horrors of the Korean War. It is an assured, forceful depiction of three young soldiers in the South … [Read More]
Everything Yearned For
Publisher description: Manhae (1879-1944), or Han Yongun, was a Korean Buddhist (Son) monk during the era of Japanese colonial occupation (1910-1945). Manhae is a political and cultural hero in Korea, and his works are studied by college students and school children alike. Everything Yearned For is a collection of 88 love poems, evocative of the … [Read More]
Your Paradise
One of the most revered novels of 20th-century literature in Korea, Your Paradise tells the story of a leper colony, where the lepers are outwardly treated with the greatest of kindnesses. Indeed, a new director is attempting the reintegrate the leper community and their families with the world outside the leper island. But suddenly he … [Read More]
The Cry of the Harp: Selected Works of Choe Chung-Hui
The works of Choe Chung-hui gathered in this book cover a period of 40 years of momentous change in Korea. Ms. Choe was born in 1906 as Korea was evolving from a nation governed and ruled by Confucian precepts to a nation that had recently opened its door to the influence of the West. Traditional … [Read More]
A Floating City on the Water
A Floating City on the Water is a novel that carves in powerful relief how ideological division between South and North Korea wreaks tragic consequences upon a family for three generations. It is also a poignant story of incest between Sujin, an older sister born and raised in South Korea and Hansuk, a younger brother … [Read More]
Korean Drama Under Japanese Occupation
From the publisher’s website: From 1910 to 1945, Japan occupied Korea and controlled every aspect of the Korean life. This book selects three plays by two prominent Korean writers, Ch’i-jin Yu and Man-sik Ch’ae, who ventured to voice anti-Japanese sentiments in their plays despite the harsh censorship. In The Ox, two brothers suddenly find their … [Read More]
Eternity Today
To celebrate the first anniversary of his death, a book of selected poems by the late Ku Sang (1919-2004) has been published by Seoul Selection in English translation. Translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé at Sogang University, the book contains a total of 99 poems arranged not in chronological order, but under five major themes: … [Read More]
Virtual Reality
From the translator’s website: Young-moo Kim was a professor of English literature who began to write poetry quite late. He published 3 volumes. We worked together on my early translations, then he developed lung cancer and died soon after the publication of his 3rd volume, mostly devoted to his illness and the time he spent … [Read More]
What the Spider Said
From the publisher’s website: This is a collection of short “epigrammatic” poems by Chang Soo Ko originally written in Korean. The narrator of the poems is conceived to be a “spider,” which to the poet’s mind represents a mystic observer with “spiderly” sense of humor. The poems were written with substantial attention to poetic vision … [Read More]
The Curse of Kim’s Daughters
Songsu Kim is orphaned when his father runs away from home and her mother takes poison. Raised by his uncle, he inherits the family pharmacy and later invests in a small fishing fleet. He marries Punshi of his uncle’s choosing and has five daughters, but curse is the undercurrent of their lives – the eldest … [Read More]