This book is a collection of translations of the complete short stories of Park Jiwon. Park Jiwon’s novels are populated with the full range of individuals who had been entirely excluded from the literary lens of Joseon (1392-1910). Park’s writings are an exploration of the full range of human experience in society. But rather than … [Read More]
Booklist: Literature Fiction and Poetry (page 47)
Into the Light: An Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan
Into the Light is the first anthology to introduce the fiction of Japan’s Korean community (Zainichi Koreans) to the English-speaking world. The collection brings together works by many of the most important Zainichi Korean writers of the twentieth century, from the colonial-era “Into the Light” (1939) by Kim Sa-ryang to “Full House” (1997) by Yu Miri, … [Read More]
Your Republic Is Calling You
A foreign film importer, Gi-yeong is a family man with a wife and daughter. An aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi, he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Suddenly he receives a mysterious email, a directive seemingly from the home office. He has one day … [Read More]
The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost
Publisher description: The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost incorporates Korean folk tales, ghost stories, and myth into a phenomenal depiction of epic tragedy. Written by a zainichi, a permanent resident of Japan who is not of Japanese ancestry, the novel tells the story of Mandogi, a young priest living on the island of Cheju-do. Mandogi becomes unwittingly … [Read More]
On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea
Collected here are translations into English of six classic stories from colonial Korea (1910-1945) as well as the time of liberation (1945-1948). Each piece takes a different perspective on a defining process in Korean history—the colonization and modernization under Japanese rule. The volume demonstrates the rich variety of registers, settings, styles, and thematic concerns that … [Read More]
I Heard Life Calling Me
Yi Song-bok has been hailed as one of the most important contemporary South Korean poets. His first collection of poems, When Does a Rolling Stone Awaken, published in 1980, is a trenchant critique of the state of mind of Koreans and of the social and political conditions in the country at the time. His second … [Read More]
Translucency: Selected Poems of Chankyung Sung
From the publisher’s website: Translucency puts together about fifty poems by Chankyung Sung that showcase his dexterous command of metaphor and subtle sensibility toward language. In these poems, Sung portrays a complex world of man’s spirit with refined language, opening a new horizon of intellectual poetry, or “metaphysical lyrics,” in Korea. It is not the … [Read More]
Soldiers on the Cultural Front: Developments in the Early History of North Korean Literature and Literary Policy
From the publisher’s website: An understanding of contemporary North Korea’s literature is virtually impossible without an investigation of its formative period, 1945–1960, which saw a gradual transformation from the initial “Soviet era” to a Korean version of “national Stalinism.” This turbulent epoch established a long-lasting framework for North Korean literature and set up an elaborate … [Read More]
The Long Road
The Long Road is a moving, elegiac short novel that examines the processes that caused idealistic young Koreans to depart for overseas during the 1990s in the wake of their experiences under Korea’s darker days of military dictatorship in the 1980s. The story centres on a trio of men: Han-Yeong, who although initially attracted to … [Read More]
Until Peonies Bloom: the complete poems of Kim Yeong-nang
Kim Yeong-nang (1903–1950) is highly reputed in Korea for the delicate lyricism of his poems. Yet in many ways he has remained little known, even in Korea, limited to a small number of often anthologized poems. Although he was a resolute opponent of Japanese colonial rule, he did not suffer frequent imprisonment, or death, so … [Read More]
Far-Off Saint: poems of Cho O-hyun
From the publisher’s website: Cho O-hyun, a Buddhist monk and poet, was born in 1932. He became a Buddhist monk in 1958, and started his literacy career in 1966. He has become one of the prominent figures in the literary world and has been awarded several prestigious prizes in Korea. Currently, he is the director … [Read More]
Songs for Tomorrow: A Collection of Poems 1960-2002
From the publisher’s website: In this long awaited full survey of the poetic writing of Korea’s leading literary spokesperson, the translators have gathered poems from 42 years, representing numerous of the author’s 135 books. As they note in their introduction, “Ko Un is…like a force of nature.” Born in 1933 in southwestern Korea, he grew … [Read More]
Contradictions
Yang Gui-ja is one of Korea’s major literary figures of the last generation, with a succession of literary prizes and best-sellers to her credit. Her most representative early work, the 1987 Wonmi-dong saramdeul, is available in English as A Distant and Beautiful Place. In the 1990s her writing took an increasingly personal turn with a … [Read More]
Day-Shine
From the publisher’s website: Powerfully inventive poems of love in contemporary life by Chong Hyon-jong, one of the most respected poets writing in Korea. The novelty of his poetic language with its narrative lyricism and provacative philosophy makes it impossible to classify Chong’s poetry, and yet it is a holder of tradition which embodies the … [Read More]
Sending the Ship Out to the Stars
From the publisher’s website: Park Je-chun is a major poet in Korea today. His works are marked by a poetic imagination and a sensibility which draw largely on Korean Buddhist and Taoist traditions, as well as Korean classical literature. Though he is widely read in the Oriental classics and Western poetry, Park’s emotions, imagery, and … [Read More]
Back to Heaven: Selected Poems of Ch’on Sang Pyong
From the publisher’s website: These poems by “the happiest man in the world” are full of light though written in dark times. Ch’ōn had the art of seeing the beauty of life beyond all the pain, and of putting it into the music of words. Recently, many young Koreans have discovered in these poems and … [Read More]