When a mother allows her thirty-something daughter to move into her apartment, she wants for her what many mothers might say they want for their child: a steady income, and, even better, a good husband with a good job with whom to start a family. But when Green turns up with her girlfriend, Lane, in … [Read More]
Booklist: Literature Fiction and Poetry (page 16)
Present Tense Complex
The poems in this fearless debut, which entangle themes of identity, family, gender, and landscape, are gorgeous, elliptical, and delightfully strange. “Her softening grip of reality. / As if capsized, hull forced into the cold / current, she was out of the blue beautiful. // No more cranes akimbo in the midst of poems / … [Read More]
Korean Teachers
Winner of the Hankyoreh Literature Award, Seo Su-jin’s debut novel follows four Korean language lecturers at Seoul’s prestigious H University over the course of an academic year. Readers will spend one season with each of the four protagonists—Seon-yi in the spring, Mi-ju in the summer, Ga-eun in the autumn, and Han-hee in the winter—getting a … [Read More]
The Old Woman with the Knife
From the publisher’s website: The kinetic story of a sixty-five-year-old female assassin who faces an unexpected threat in the twilight of her career—this is an international bestseller and the English language debut from an award-winning South Korean author At sixty-five, Hornclaw is beginning to slow down. She lives modestly in a small apartment, with only her … [Read More]
The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea
For generations, deadly storms have ravaged Mina’s homeland. Her people believe the Sea God, once their protector, now curse them with death and despair. To appease him, each year a maiden is thrown into the sea, in the hopes that one day the ‘true bride’ will be chosen and end the suffering. Many believe Shim … [Read More]
Beasts of a Little Land
It is 1917, and Korea is yet to be divided into north and south. With the threat of famine looming, a young girl named Jade is sold by her family to Miss Silver’s courtesan school in cosmopolitan Pyongyang, an act of desperation that will cement her place in the lowest social status. But the city’s … [Read More]
Invisible Land of Love: Poems of Chonggi Mah
The collection consists of the author’s monologues and narrative poems, and a single dialogue between him and his young son. Contemporary America, Korea of old and new, and parts of world are the setting. His poems are a mixture of components that shows sweetness, beauty, sadness, easiness and honesty that no one can reject. Experiences … [Read More]
The World You Want to See (K-Fiction 031)
To face the real in a world full of fake news. The novel is set in a world where smart devices called ‘agents’ have become commercially available. As the title of the novel suggests, the Agent is a device that delivers only the world that the user wants to see, whether it’s pure, glorified, or … [Read More]
The Red Palace
To enter the palace means to walk a path stained in blood… Joseon (Korea), 1758. There are few options available to illegitimate daughters in the capital city, but through hard work and study, eighteen-year-old Hyeon has earned a position as a palace nurse. All she wants is to keep her head down, do a good job, … [Read More]
Cold Candies
Cold Candies encapsulate the saccharine strangeness of a woman’s life. Fragments of narratives about girls, dolls, sisters, mothers, men, lizards, the moon, and pillows are brought together into otherworldly images that are devastating, yet familiar. Lee Young-ju is one of South Korea’s most original minds, and this collection, curated and translated by National Endowment of … [Read More]
I am the Subway
A cinematic journey through the Seoul subway that masterfully portrays the many unique lives we travel alongside whenever we take the train. A poetic translation of the bestselling Korean picture book. Accompanied by the constant, rumbling ba-dum ba-dum of its passage through the city, the subway has stories to tell. Between sunrise and sunset, it welcomes and … [Read More]
One Day
A gentle, delicately illustrated story about loss that has a cosmic dimension. A boy’s grandfather goes away suddenly, never to return. How could he leave so suddenly? His smell remains in his sweater, and his shoes are there to be worn. Plus, his friends at the fountain just saw him! The boy lingers in the … [Read More]
The Hellbound
One day, you will receive a message from an unknown sender. The message will only include your name, the fact that you are going to hell, and the time you have left to live. When the time counts down to zero, supernatural beings manifest to condemn you to hell. Amid social chaos and increasing hysteria, … [Read More]
You Have Reached the End of the Future (K-Poet 24)
This is the English version of a collection of poems by poet Hwang In-chan. Everyday scenes flow like a plain confession and become a piece of poetry. The trivial conversations, sometimes like jokes and sometimes meaningless, approach me coldly and honestly, and the more I think about them, the more I think there will be … [Read More]
Non-matter (K-Poet 23)
Poet Lee Hyeon-ho’s third collection of poetry. Scenes of love that are beautiful and therefore infinitely sad are endlessly reborn in the poet’s sentences. To a poet, love is a name that must be called endlessly without any choice, and when love is pronounced accurately at the tip of the poet’s tongue, the world will … [Read More]
The Three Water Drop Brothers
Graphically gorgeous, with sweetness and flair, this is a book to get any kid hooked on the wonders of the water cycle! A long, long time ago, when the earth was extremely hot, a huge amount of vapor was released, creating clouds. As the clouds got bigger and heavier, it started to rain. Three of … [Read More]