Each story in Swell launches from the common but pivotal moments that determine the course of everyday life, but they’re often filtered through the perspective of someone else: documentarians, novelists, storytellers, gossips. Then, as the stories build atop one another and intertwine, they begin to shift and destabilize. Characters return but their histories are changed, alternate timelines … [Read More]
Booklist: Short Stories
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]
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]
A Love Story from the End of the World
From the acclaimed author of Beasts of a Little Land and Reese’s Book Club pick City of Night Birds, an exquisite, globetrotting story collection about humans in precarious balance with the natural world. Spanning multiple locations and times, and rendered in fine detail and vivid color, this transportive, expansive collection shows what it means to … [Read More]
Island Ablaze and Other Stories
Island Ablaze and Other Stories is an anthology of thirteen stories—eleven from South Korea and two from North Korea—about their complicated relationships with their most important ally and enemy: the United States. Set in times ranging from colonial Korea to the new millennium, these stories offer a look into the many ways that the US empire shapes … [Read More]
No Hand Held Mine
An elderly Korean woman talking about being forced into sexual slavery during World War II. A modern Korean woman extricating herself from a failing relationship with an artist. Award-winning South Korean writer Kim Soom presents us with portraits of two women who couldn’t be more different but who both show resilience and compassion. No Hand Held … [Read More]
Roadkill
An effervescent speculative short story collection by South Korean author Amil for the next generation who crave a fresh perspective. With strong roots in feminist science fiction and fantasy, Roadkill is for the next generation of readers of speculative fiction who love to be transported to different worlds but also crave a fresh perspective. Featuring … [Read More]
Chinatown
In this emblematic selection of her stories, Oh Jung-hee probes beneath the surface of seemingly quotidian lives to expose nightmarish family configurations warped by desertion, psychosis, and death. In ‘Chinatown’ a young girl living on the edge of the city’s Chinese community comes of age among mundane violences, collisions with adult sexuality and the American … [Read More]
Broccoli Punch
A collection of short stories flirting with the surreal and Kafkaesque: a father whose ashes turn into a chatting plant, a boyfriend whose hand becomes a broccoli, a group of investigative aliens fascinated by idol culture. Yuri’s world is permeated with humour, emotions, and style, giving us a refreshing perspective into the complexities of human … [Read More]
Failed Summer Vacation
“This summer vacation is not a complete failure quite yet – there’s still a lot left we can ruin.” The debut collection of genre-defying short stories from the Korean Literature and Society’s New Writer Award. Seven diversely wild and gripping stories – dreamy, dark, lyrical and wry – that expose the oddness of how we … [Read More]
Green Frog
Here are fifteen pitch-perfect stories about women trying to make their own way: featuring daughters, divorcees, fox demons, a praying mantis, and . . . green frogs. A young girl reconnects with her Korean grandmother; an artist considers her connection to the Korean folktale of the green frog; a praying mantis living in a beautiful … [Read More]
Hidden Heroes: Anthology of North Korean Fiction
Hidden Heroes is a collection of short stories from the 1980s to present that unveil the lives of ordinary North Koreans. Through themes of identity, community, and power, it reveals a complex society, offering readers a nuanced understanding beyond prevailing stereotypes Hidden Heroes offers a rare and intimate glimpse into the lives of ordinary North … [Read More]
Snowy Day and Other Stories
The first story collection published in English by Lee Chang-dong, one of South Korea’s most celebrated and influential literary and cinematic figures. Much like Lee Chang-dong’s internationally renowned films (Burning, Secret Sunshine, and Poetry), these brilliant, unsettling tales, originally published in Korea in the 1980s and now translated into English for the first time, investigate … [Read More]
To the Kennels, and other stories
An acclaimed story collection from the author of the Shirley Jackson Award–winning novel The Hole Six elephants bolt from an amusement park and vanish; where they’re found brings back memories of a forgotten dictator. A car ride on a foggy highway at night becomes a drive through hell for a young couple getting away for the … [Read More]
Everything Good Dies Here: Tales from the Linker Universe and Beyond
Introducing English readers to the speculative fiction of pseudonymous author Djuna, whose writings and interventions into internet culture have attracted a cult following in South Korea The stories brought together in this collection introduce for the first time in English the dazzling speculative imaginings of Djuna, one of South Korea’s most provocative SF writers. Whether … [Read More]
Wafers
This 2006 collection of short stories is in line with the unsettling, engrossing style of Ha’s other two collections that have been translated into English, the critical and commercial successes Flowers of Mold and Bluebeard’s First Wife. A best-seller in Korea, Ha Seong-nan is one of the stars of contemporary short fiction, writing edgy, socially conscious stories that … [Read More]