In South Korea, underground motorcycle gangs attract society’s castoffs. They form groups of hundreds and speed wildly through cities at night. For Jae and Dongyu, two orphans, their motorcycles are a way of survival. Jae is born in a bathroom stall at the Seoul Express Bus Terminal. And Dongyu is born mute–unable to communicate with … [Read More]
Booklist: Literature Fiction and Poetry (page 29)
Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik Reader
Ch’ae Manshik is one of the most accomplished modern Korean writers yet is underrepresented in English translation because of the challenges posed by his distinctive voice and colloquial style. Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik Reader is the first English-language anthology of his works and features a variety of genres—novella, short fiction, anecdotal essay, travel writing, children’s … [Read More]
Ordinary Misfortunes
From the publisher’s website: Korea continues to grapple with the shared memory of its Japanese and US occupations. The poems in Ordinary Misfortunes incorporate actual testimony about cruelty against vulnerable bodies—including the wianbu, euphemistically known as “comfort women” —as the poet seeks to find places where brutality is overcome through true human connections. [Read More]
Uncomfortably Happily
From the publisher’s website: When the Gentler Pace and Stillness of the Countryside Replace the Roar of the City, but your Editor Keeps Calling With gorgeously detailed yet minimal art, cartoonist Yeon-Sik Hong explores his move with his wife to a small house atop a rural mountain, replacing the high-rent hubbub of Seoul with the … [Read More]
Familiar Things
Seoul. On the outskirts of South Korea’s glittering metropolis is a place few people know about: a vast landfill site called Flower Island. Home to those driven from the city by poverty, is it here that 14-year-old Bugeye and his mother arrive, following his father’s internment in a government ‘re-education camp’. Living in a shack … [Read More]
An Anthology of Traditional Korean Literature
This revised, expanded anthology, compiled and edited by pioneering scholar and translator Peter H. Lee, offers a representative selection of traditional Korean literature. Its rich and diverse selections, covering all genres and forms written in classical (literary) Chinese and the vernacular Korean language, were chosen for both their literary merit and socio-historical engagement with their … [Read More]
Beauty Looks Down on Me
Beauty Looks Down On Me is a collection of by turns sad and funny stories about the thwarted expectations of the young as they grow older. Eun Hee-kyung’s characters are misfits who by virtue of their bodies or their lack of social status are left to dream of momentous changes that will never come. Unsatisfied … [Read More]
Wolves
“Written in a beautifully rendered, nuanced language, Wolves is a window into a little-known world.” —Krys Lee – Author of How I Became a North Korean Jeon Sungtae’s short stories build a unique world through their consummate construction and firm roots in reality. With Mongolia as the physical background and through the perspectives of outsiders, … [Read More]
The Impossible Fairy Tale
A chilling, wildly original novel from a major new voice from South Korea The Impossible Fairy Tale is the story of two unexceptional grade-school girls. Mia is “lucky”―she is spoiled by her mother and, as she explains, her two fathers. She gloats over her exotic imported color pencils and won’t be denied a coveted sweater. … [Read More]
Beating on Iron
From the publisher’s website: Kim Soo-Bok has been publishing poetry for 40 years in South Korea. This volume contains translations of the poet’s own selection from his entire life’s work, representing poems marked by compassion and sensitivity, which often adopt a surrealist position in presenting their relationships between the poet and the surrounding world. Many … [Read More]
A Small Revolution
In this powerful, page-turning debut, Jimin Han deftly shows that revolutions―whether big or small, in the world or of the heart―can have an impact that lasts through time and spans the oceans. On a beautiful Pennsylvania fall morning, a gunman holds college freshman Yoona Lee and three of her classmates hostage in the claustrophobic confines … [Read More]
Meeting with my brother
Yi Mun-yol’s Meeting with My Brother is narrated by a middle-aged South Korean professor, also named Yi, whose father abandoned his family and defected to the North at the outbreak of the Korean War. Many years later, despite having spent most of his life under a cloud of suspicion as the son of a traitor, … [Read More]
Grasshoppers’ Eyes
From the publisher’s website: The poems of Ko Hyeong-Ryeol are mostly inspired by the landscapes and cityscapes of Korea, occasionally echoing journeys to other lands. The poet allows his memories and imagination free reign so that his poems escape from the limits of naturalistic description and invite the reader to sense both the interrelatedness and … [Read More]
The Worm Poet
From the publisher’s website: Sungsun Lee is a great nature poet. In his poems, like pictures of nature, he always communicates with all things in the universe. He shows how to communicate with others, including humans, animals, plants, and even lifeless things. Sungsun especially shows the beautiful and mysterious world of nature that we can’t … [Read More]
The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea
In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung’s totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea and set for publication around the world in 2017, The Accusation provides a unique and shocking window on this most secretive … [Read More]
No Flower Blooms Without Wavering
From the publisher’s website: Description It has been a joy to translate poems by one of Korea’s most widely loved poets. The poems of Do Jong-Hwan do not need much explanation or commentary. They are not difficult to understand but offer glimpses of wisdom, lessons learned from life’s greatest joys and deepest pains. Koreans love … [Read More]