A romantic thriller exploring the dark corners of human desire and isolation with quiet eeriness Is a fresh start truly possible? Or will society’s strictures and your own impulses keep re-creating the same messed-up relationships in every narrow room you enter? Choi Seongmin’s Narrow Rooms follows a young woman who leaves her rural hometown to study in … [Read More]
Booklist: Literature Fiction and Poetry (page 3)
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light
From Korean science fiction author Kim Cho-yeop, a stunning and poignant collection of literary speculative fiction stories that explore the complexities of identity, love, death, and the search for life’s meaning, perfect for fans of Exhalation and The Paper Menagerie. In If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, Korean science fiction superstar Kim … [Read More]
Molka
Junyoung and Dahye are colleagues; he has a taste for voyeurism and she a hunger for revenge. Molka (n): the Korean term for spy cameras secretly and illegally installed, often to capture voyeuristic images and videos. Dahye has met the man of her dreams – Hyukjoon, who happens to be the heir to a multi-billion … [Read More]
Project V
STEMinist mecha fantasy meets reality television in this high-stakes novel from the author of A Magical Girl Retires — a wildly imaginative tale of sibling bonds, unexpected friendship, and an existential quest to understand what it means to be human. Robotics student Kim Wooram, runner-up at the World Gigantic Mechanics Olympiad, is a world-class pilot and … [Read More]
Dreamt I Found You
From the critically acclaimed author of The Apology comes a contemporary retelling of Korea’s Romeo & Juliet, as the cousin of the star-crossed lovers helps them avoid a tragic fate. When Dahee Shin was nine years old, she made a promise to protect her favorite cousin, Channing, who has always been like a sister to … [Read More]
Mrs Shim Is a Killer
A gripping tale of love, food and one woman’s unconventional quest to support her family. I am no ordinary ajumma. I am a killer When Mrs Shim – widowed, unemployed, with two children at home and a fridge to fill – answers a job ad at the Smile Detective Agency, she boosts its fortunes forever. … [Read More]
Honey in the Wound
Spanning the 20th century, Honey in the Wound follows a mysteriously gifted lineage of Korean women as they are displaced across Asia by Japanese imperialism. At this novel’s heart is Young-Ja, whose family is killed by Japanese soldiers. Her magical gift – the ability to infuse her cooking with her feelings: love, peace, delight – … [Read More]
American Han
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother, Kevin, dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud. Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional … [Read More]
The Legend of Lady Byeoksa
A tale of star-crossed lovers, political intrigue and mysticism inspired by Korean mythology and set in the Joseon dynasty. ‘Whether I remember or not, it seems I am destined to love you.’ Lady Seomun Bin has a secret: she is a cross-dressing byeoksa, or ghost-stalker. Born with the unenviable ability to see spirits, she is … [Read More]
The Memory Bookshop
For lovers of The Midnight Library and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, discover a spellbinding novel about a mysterious bookshop that exists outside of time and space, where the past is only a page away… If you’re lost, you’ll find The Memory Bookshop Where the shelves are endless. The books, strangely familiar. And where memories are bound in … [Read More]
Minbak
The night the baby without a surname was born, the army rolled into his mother’s town Incheon, South Korea, 1985. The country is revolting against a dictatorship, but in the local boarding-house, the chaos inside is only just beginning. When Hana is pulled from school to work in her family’s minbak, all she wants is … [Read More]
With the Heart of a Ghost: Stories
With the Heart of a Ghost is a debut collection of eight fantastical stories translated by Chi-Young Kim (Whale) that explore feelings unseen, unconveyed, unexplainable. The funny, meditative characters who inhabit this book are pulled far from their ordinary daily routines to stare straight into their own sorrows, however they manifest. Ghosts and otherworldly occurrences … [Read More]
Holy Boy
One idol. Four fans. Worship’s never been bloodier. Yosep is a K-pop idol with millions of adoring fans. But for four of them, a poster on the wall just won’t cut it. They have a plan—a perfect, foolproof plan—to get their idol all to themselves. Kidnapping Yosep seemed like the ultimate act of love. But … [Read More]
Simple Heart
In this moving exploration of dual identities reminiscent of Past Lives, a Korean writer’s pregnancy raises questions about her own childhood abandonment. Nana, a Korean playwright, was adopted as a child by a French couple. Before she was Nana, she was Esther Pak, a girl growing up in a Korean orphanage. And before she was Esther … [Read More]
The Hell of That Star
Singular poetry made through censorship, elusion, and language renewal The astonishing poetry collection The Hell of That Star enlivens the horror of Korean life under U.S.-backed authoritarianism. Poems of blows and vomit, births and coffins alternate blithe confidence and trembling terror. When slapped seven times by a government censor, Kim responded with defiant poems. The death of language … [Read More]
Hail, Che!
An explosive collection of revolutionary poems that make the case that only poetry can save humanity. Korean poet Pak Jeong-de envisioned Hail, Che! as a textual performance that sings and dreams of revolution. In these poems, he invokes the names of more than 200 artists— writers, musicians, filmmakers, and painters—whom he considers comrades capable of saving humanity. … [Read More]