North Korean Writers in Exile PEN Center is the 144th member of PEN International. Since defecting from North Korea because of their opposition to the dynastic dictatorship, the members of the center have been creating literature that depicts the harsh reality of North Korea and engaging in various activities to improve conditions there. The single … [Read More]
Booklist: Literature Fiction and Poetry (page 30)
SF-Consensus
From the publisher’s website: About the Book SF-Consensus is a poetry collection of 80 poems by Park Je-chun. In reading Park’s poetry one often gets the impression that he communicates intimately and intensely with nature and the transcendent realm as well as everyday human reality. His poetic prowess often creates esoteric yet gripping imagery, stories … [Read More]
A Lion at Three in the Morning
From the publisher’s website: About the Book A Lion at Three in the Morning contains about sixty poems by Nam Jin-Woo who sings of encounters with unfamiliar things. They may be animals such as a lion or alligators, a plant, a region’s climate or some other strange natural phenomenon. These unfamiliar things function as a … [Read More]
Poems of Kim Yideum, Kim Haengsook + Kim Min Jeong
From the publisher’s website: This collection brings together three of the most exciting voices in contemporary Korean poetry to the English language in translation. These three women poets shock and delight, entertain and de-familiarize, corrupt and contaminate traditional readings and stereotypical definitions of Asian women, Asian poetry, Asian-ness. While K-pop girl groups sell cuteness, marketing … [Read More]
Recitation
The meeting between a group of emigrants and a mysterious, wandering actress in an empty train station sets the stage for Recitation, a fragmentary yet lyrical meditation on language, travel, and memory by South Korea’s most prominent contemporary female author. As the actress recounts the fascinating story of her stateless existence, an unreliable narrator and … [Read More]
The Story of P.C. (K-Fiction 019)
After a writer who has maintained a steady sales index by continuously releasing new books becomes embroiled in a controversy over the content of a new work that reveals his interest in society, the book traces the publishers and writers who deal with the controversy. Mr. P, a novelist, has been publishing novels for six … [Read More]
Halloween (K-Fiction 018)
In February 2017, a new short story by Jeong Han-ah, an artist who has been depicting life with a warm and delicate gaze, was published as the seventeenth edition of the K-Fiction series. “Halloween” follows a mysterious woman who is an astrologer and tarot card master who listens to the voices of the living and … [Read More]
Everything About Chess (K-Fiction 017)
Novelist Kim Geum-hee, who has won the hearts of literary readers with her static yet resonant style, has published Everything About Chess as the sixteenth K-fiction series. “All About Chess” depicts the relationship between “me,” Noah, and Chrysanthemum, who spent their college days together, as they struggle with the misfortunes of life and their own … [Read More]
The Summer (K-Fiction 016)
Choi Eun-young’s latest work and the eighteenth work of ‘K-Fiction’, The Summer is about two 18-year-old girls unexpectedly falling in love. It is a novel that captures the small cracks in their daily life in a clear and transparent watercolor-like landscape of a summer when they are shaken by the emotion of love that has … [Read More]
The Muslim Butcher
Several decades after the Korean War, the unnamed narrator of this story is taken in by an aged Turk, Uncle Hassan, a veteran of that conflict who makes a living as a butcher in a Seoul slum. The precocious narrator, a troubled boy, wonders who his parents are and why they abandoned him. He befriends … [Read More]
Though flowers fall I have never forgotten you
From the publisher’s website: Don’t cry. To be lonely is to be human. To go on living is to endure loneliness. Do not wait in vain for the phone call that never comes. When snow falls, walk on snowy paths, when rain falls, walk on rainy paths. A black-breasted longbill is watching you from the … [Read More]
The Amusing Life
The Amusing Life is a collection of over forty stories, sketches, vignettes and fables that search out the comical, even the absurd, aspects of everyday life. Along the way, the conventions and mores of work, art, nation, love and family are examined and made newly strange. Two rival countries race to raise the tallest flag. … [Read More]
Evening Proposal
Evening Proposal is a collection of eight stories about the grim and often faceless nature of urban life. Faintly reminiscent of Franz Kafka, the stories range from a man who discovers that his job performance has no significance while taking refuge in taking care of an abandoned rabbit to a man who finally expresses his … [Read More]
Turbid River
Turbid River was written just before Ch’ae Man-Sik was arrested in 1938 by the Japanese colonial government. Like the two novels that followed (Peace Under Heaven and Frozen Fish), Turbid River is a realistic portrayal of life in Korea under Japanese colonization. The tragic story of a woman’s life, the novel is also a penetrating … [Read More]
The Library of Musical Instruments
The second short-story collection by Kim Jung-hyuk, the author of Penguin News, features a total of eight short stories, including Syncopation D which won the 2nd Kim You-jeong Literary Award in 2008. They represent the many sounds sampled by the author when he recorded over 600 kinds of musical instruments. Like instruments coming together in … [Read More]
Mannequin
Ch’oe Yun’s Mannequin is a novel that reflects on the meaning of beauty and its many facets of existence. The beauty of the main character, Jini, is captured through a carefree imagination that describes it as the music of the wind, or something that can t be described in words. Through the beauty that penetrates … [Read More]