Details from LTI Korea website. The title is available from Kyobo and probably other Korean online stores: Times like this are no good. They’re too distant from the root cause. I think I was a weaver in a factory a hundred years ago. Maybe a handweaver for hire a thousand years ago. I’m now weaving … [Read More]
Booklist: Literature Fiction and Poetry (page 21)
Maya in Tokyo (K-Fiction 027)
As this is an Asia Publishers title, it’s pretty difficult to obtain outside of Korea. Text from the listing on the Kyobo website, fed through the Papago translation engine: Nothing. Just grow into Maya. In July 2020, Jang Ryu-jin’s “Maya in Tokyo” was published as the 27th installment of K-fiction. Jang Ryu-jin’s new short novel, … [Read More]
Bluebeard’s First Wife
From the publisher’s website: Disasters, accidents, and deaths abound in Bluebeard’s First Wife. A woman spends a night with her fiancé and his friends, and overhears a terrible secret that has bound them together since high school. A man grows increasingly agitated by the apartment noise made by a young family living upstairs and arouses … [Read More]
Seven Years of Darkness
A young girl is found dead in Seryong Lake, a reservoir in a remote South Korean village. The police immediately begin their investigation. At the same time, three men – Yongje, the girl’s father, and two security guards at the nearby dam, each of whom has something to hide about the night of her death … [Read More]
Friend
Paek Nam-nyong’s Friend is a tale of marital intrigue, abuse, and divorce in North Korea. A woman in her thirties comes to a courthouse petitioning for a divorce. As the judge who hears her statement begins to investigate the case, the story unfolds into a broader consideration of love and marriage. The novel delves into … [Read More]
The Law of Lines
The Law of Lines follows the parallel stories of two young women whose lives are upended by sudden loss. When Se-oh, a recluse still living with her father, returns from an errand to find their house in flames, wrecked by a gas explosion, she is forced back into the world she had tried to escape. … [Read More]
The Silence of Bones
June Hur’s elegant and haunting debut The Silence of Bones is a bloody YA historical mystery tale perfect for fans of Kerri Maniscalco and Renée Ahdieh. I have a mouth, but I mustn’t speak; Ears, but I mustn’t hear; Eyes, but I mustn’t see. 1800, Joseon (Korea). Homesick and orphaned sixteen-year-old Seol is living out the ancient … [Read More]
Tales of the Strange by a Korean Confucian Monk: Kŭmo sinhwa by Kim Sisŭp
One of the most important and celebrated works of premodern Korean prose fiction, Kŭmo sinhwa (New Tales of the Golden Turtle) is a collection of five tales of the strange artfully written in literary Chinese by Kim Sisŭp (1435–1493). Kim was a major intellectual and poet of the early Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1897), and this book … [Read More]
DMZ Colony
From the publisher’s website: Winner of the National Book Award Woven from poems, prose, photographs, and drawings, Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony is a tour de force of personal and political reckoning set over eight acts. Evincing the power of translation as a poetic device to navigate historical and linguistic borders, it explores Edward Said’s notion of “the intertwined … [Read More]
Umma’s Table
Following his acclaimed English language debut Uncomfortably Happily, Yeon-sik Hong returns with a graphic novel that is as insightful as wrenching as it probes life with aging parents and how we support the people we love. A new father named Madang, moves to a quiet cottage in the countryside with his wife and young baby. … [Read More]
Whale and Vapor
The poems in WHALE AND VAPOR emphasize exhaustion—physically, mentally, and as an existential condition. Kim Kyung Ju playfully turns toward the lyric in this work as a way to reconcile himself with the contemporary world by engaging in dialogue with his Korean literary ancestry. Masterfully translated by Jake Levine in close conversation with the author, … [Read More]
We, At the End of the World (K-Poet 12)
From the Kyobo bookstore website, fed through Papago Translate: Me and you holding hands in the end of the world. a new collection of poems by Yang An-da, “We, At the End of the World” “K-Poet” series introduces the essence of Korean poetry that you always want to read next to you. Over time, Korean … [Read More]
Deep Work (K-Poet 11)
As this is a recent publication by Asia Publishers, it’s hard to find outside of Korea. The following description is from the Korean listing on the Kyobo website, fed through the Google translation engine: Remembering the sadness of that day that will never be forgotten Ahn Hyun-mi’s new poetry collection Deep Work The ‘K-Poet’ series … [Read More]
Notes from the North
Notes from the North is horrific, powerful, and astute, full of passion and moral authority. Although weve heard about the brutal dictatorship of North Korea before, these poems surpass journalism and bring us the voices on the brink, with the compelling urgency of a diary of contemporary tyranny and the havoc it wreaks. This is a … [Read More]
The Great Homecoming
1959, Seoul. Divided from his family by the violent tumult of the Korean civil war, Yunho arrives in South Korea’s capital searching for his oldest friend. He finds him in the arms of Eve Moon, a dancer with many names who may be a refugee fleeing the communist North, or an American spy. Beguiled, Yunho … [Read More]
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
Kim Jiyoung is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy. Kim Jiyoung is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own. Kim Jiyoung is a female preyed upon by male teachers at school. Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blames her when she … [Read More]