Here is a list of titles published in 2019 that we’ve been tracking and even hoping to read: literature in translation, Korea-related fiction and poetry in English, plus notable non-fiction titles.
Sorted by date of publication, most recent first.
| Book | Cover image |
Invincible and Righteous Outlaw: The Korean Hero Hong Gildong in Literature, History, and Culture One of the most important and popular premodern Korean novels, The Story of Hong Gildong is a fast-paced adventure story about the illegitimate son of a nobleman who becomes the leader of a band of honest outlaws who take from the rich and punish the corrupt. Despite the importance of the work to Korean culture […] (Link to online store) | |
Autobiography of Death From the publisher’s website: The title section of Kim Hyesoon’s powerful new book, Autobiography of Death, consists of forty-nine poems, each poem representing a single day during which the spirit roams after death before it enters the cycle of reincarnation. The poems not only give voice to those who met unjust deaths during Korea’s violent contemporary […] (Link to online store) | |
A Place to Live: A New Translation of Yi Chung-hwan’s T’aengniji Full title: A Place to Live: A New Translation of Yi Chung-hwan’s T’aengniji, the Korean Classic for Choosing Settlements From the publisher’s website: A Place to Live brings together in a single volume an introduction to Yi Chung-hwan’s (1690–1756) T’aengniji (Treatise on Choosing Settlement)—one of the most widely read and influential of the Korean classics—and an annotated translation […] (Link to online store) | |
Was that Mountain Really There? Was that Mountain Really there? by Park Wan-Suh, an award winning and well-known Korean novelist, has recently been translated by Hannah Kim and published by Kitaab. The novel depicts the trauma of partition faced by civilians in a war that reft Korea in two. Was that Mountain Really There? portrays the suffering caused by a […] | |
Flowering Plums and Curio Cabinets: The Culture of Objects in Late Chosŏn Korean Art From the publisher’s website: The social and economic rise of the chungin class (“middle people” who ranked between the yangban aristocracy and commoners) during the late Chosŏn period (1700–1910) ushered in a world of materialism and commodification of painting and other art objects. Generally overlooked in art history, the chungin contributed to a flourishing art […] (Link to online store) | |
A New Middle Kingdom: Painting and Cultural Politics in Late Chosŏn Korea (1700–1850) Publisher description: Historians have claimed that when social stability returned to Korea after devastating invasions by the Japanese and Manchus around the turn of the seventeenth century, the late Chosŏn dynasty was a period of unprecedented economic and cultural renaissance, in which prosperity manifested itself in new programs and styles of visual art. A New Middle […] (Link to online store) | |
The Underground Village Kang Kyeong-ae (1906-1944) was a Korean writer whose stories are remarkable for their rejection of colonialism, patriarchy, and ethnic nationalism during a period when such views were truly radical and dangerous. Born in what is now North Korea, Kang wrote all her fiction in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation and witnessed the violence and daily […] (Link to online store) | |
At Dusk Park Minwoo is, by every measure, a success story. Born into poverty in a miserable neighbourhood of Seoul, he has ridden the wave of development in a rapidly modernising society. Now the director of a large architectural firm, his hard work and ambition have brought him triumph and satisfaction. But when his company is investigated […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
The Tale of Cho Ung The Tale of Cho Ung is one of the most widely read and beloved stories of Choson Korea. The anonymously written tale recounts the adventures of protagonist Cho Ung as he fearlessly confronts and overcomes obstacles and grows into a heroic young man. As a child, Ung flees a wicked tyrant who wrongfully killed his […] (Link to online store) | |
City of Ash and Red Distinguished for his talents as a rat killer, the nameless protagonist of Hye-young Pyun’s City of Ash and Red is sent by the extermination company he works for on an extended assignment in C, a country descending into chaos and paranoia, swept by a contagious disease, and flooded with trash. No sooner does he disembark […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
My Very Last Possession and Other Stories An anthology of ten short stories by one of Korea’s foremost living writers. Pak Wanso is the author of five novels, including The Naked Tree, and of several best-selling volumes of short prose. Her works have sold millions of copies in Korea, where the public and critics alike have applauded Pak as a masterful realist. […] (Link to online store) | |
Bred from the Eyes of a Wolf Equal parts poetry, drama, and sci-fi, award-winning poet Kim Kyung Ju’s verse play BRED FROM THE EYES OF A WOLF follows a post-apocalyptic family of wolves (indistinguishable from humans) forced to taxidermy their own cubs in order to survive. An allegory for the degraded social relations of the present, Kim Kyung Ju’s all-too-familiar dystopia partitions […] (Link to online store) | |
Mina “She doesn’t know what to do, and that amounts to a state of torture.” Crystal toils day and night to earn top grades at her cram school. She’s also endlessly texting, shopping, drinking, vexing her boyfriends, cranking up her mp3s, and fantasizing about her next slice of cheesecake. Her non- stop frenzy never quite manages […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
I’ll Go On ‘That’s how it generally is with Aeja’s stories. They’re as potent as a putrid peach. Listening to her words your head starts to droop with their sticky juice trickling down your ears, until all you can do is succumb to the saccharine flow.’ From one of South Korea’s most acclaimed young authors comes the story […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Bad Friends From the publisher’s website: Pearl is bad. She smokes, drinks, runs away from home, and has no qualms making her parents worry. Her mother and sister beg her to be a better student, sister, daughter; her beleaguered father expresses his concerns with his fists. Bad Friends is set in the 1990s in a South Korea torn between tradition […] (Link to online store) | |
The Court Dancer Based on a remarkable true story, the New York Times bestselling author of Please Look After Mom brilliantly images the life of Yi Jin, an orphan who would fall under the affections of the Empress and become a jewel in the late Joseon Court. When a novice French diplomat arrives for an audience with the […] (Link to online store) | |
Cultures of Yusin: South Korea in the 1970s From the publisher’s website: A broad range of scholars explores the many avenues of cultural production during the Yusin period, casting new light on how it challenged and conformed to the ambitions of the state power. Cultures of Yusin examines the turbulent and yet deeply formative period of time South Korea’s Fourth Republic (1972-79), beginning with […] (Link to online store) | |
K-Pop Live: Fans, Idols, and Multimedia Performance From the publisher’s website: 1990s South Korea saw the transition from a military dictatorship to a civilian government, from a manufacturing economy to a postindustrial hub, and from a cloistered society to a more dynamic transnational juncture. These seismic shifts had a profound impact on the media industry and the rise of K-pop. In K-pop Live, […] (Link to online store) | |
On an Autumn Night: Classical Korean Poetry From the back cover: The poems collected here are in classical Chinese, the language of learning in Korea before the turn of the twentieth century. Though they range from the seventh to the nineteenth century, most were written during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). They are five-character line quatrain poems written in the New Style, the […] (Link to online store) | |
Poems by Kim Hyun (K-Poet 06) From the LTI Korea website: They(Poem) were born as part of a larger project, titled “The Future of Voice.” That is why I begin each poem with a sound effect, indicated by an international phonetic character, instead of simply adding footnotes. I hope that the sound, born in another time-space than the visiblbe(legible) screen(writing), has […] (Link to online store) | |
Poems by Ahn Sang-hak (K-Poet 05) From LTI Korea website: The world of Ahn Sang-Hak’s poetry is built on the philosophy of non-doing naturalism. According to this idea, since nature exists, it clearly has substance; however, since its nature is not to stay fixed, but rather to change in every moment, it only appears in variations of itself. In the same […] (Link to online store) | |
If my tongue refuses to remain in my mouth From the publisher’s website: Sunwoo Kim’s debut collection of poems, If My Tongue Refuses to Remain in My Mouth, appeared in 2000, declaring in the boldest terms that at the outset of the new millennium she would bring to the page a radically different conception of poetry. Central to her work is the belief that […] (Link to online store) | |
Endless Blue Sky Set in 1940s colonial Korea and Japanese-occupied Manchuria, Endless Blue Sky tells the love story between Korean writer Ilma and Russian dancer Nadia. The novel is both a thrilling melodrama set in glamorous locations that would shortly be tragically ravaged by war, and a bold piece of writing espousing new ideas on love, marriage, and […] (Link to online store) | |
See You Again in Pyongyang: A Journey into Kim Jong Un’s North Korea From ballistic missile tests to stranger-than-fiction stories of purges and assassinations, news from North Korea never fails to dominate the global headlines. But what is life there actually like? In See You Again in Pyongyang, Jeppesen culls from his experiences living, traveling, and studying in North Korea to create a multi-faceted portrait of the country […] (Link to online store) | |
The Foresight of Dark Knowing Full title: The Foresight of Dark Knowing: Chŏng Kam Nok and Insurrectionary Prognostication in Pre-Modern Korea From the publisher’s website: Korea has long had an underground insurrectionary literature. The best-known example of the genre is the Chŏng Kam nok, a collection of premodern texts predicting the overthrow of the Yi Dynasty (1392–1910) that in recent times has […] (Link to online store) | |
The Changing Face of Korean Cinema: 1960 to 2015 From the publisher’s website: The rapid development of Korean cinema during the decades of the 1960s and 2000s reveals a dynamic cinematic history which runs parallel to the nation’s political, social, economic and cultural transformation during these formative periods. This book examines the ways in which South Korean cinema has undergone a transformation from an […] (Link to online store) | |
Buddhas and Ancestors: Religion and Wealth in Fourteenth-Century Korea Publisher description: Two issues central to the transition from the Koryo to the Choson dynasty in fourteenth-century Korea were social differences in ruling elites and the decline of Buddhism, which had been the state religion. In this revisionist history, Juhn Ahn challenges the long-accepted Confucian critique that Buddhism had become so powerful and corrupt that […] (Link to online store) | |
Parameters of Disavowal: Colonial Representation in South Korean Cinema From the publisher’s website: The colonial experience of the early twentieth century shaped Korea’s culture and identity, leaving a troubling past that was subtly reconstructed in South Korean postcolonial cinema. Relating postcolonial discourses to a reading of Manchurian action films, kisaeng and gangster films, and revenge horror films, Parameters of Disavowal shows how filmmakers reworked, […] (Link to online store) | |
Dust and other stories Yi T’aejun was one of twentieth-century Korea’s true masters of the short story–and a man who in 1946 stunned his contemporaries by moving to the Soviet-occupied northern zone of his country. In South Korea, where he is known today as “one who went north,” Yi’s work was banned until 1988. His momentous decision did not […] (Link to online store) | |
The Good Son Early one morning, twenty-six-year-old Yu-jin wakes up to a strange metallic smell, and a phone call from his brother asking if everything’s all right at home – he missed a call from their mother in the middle of the night. Yu-jin soon discovers her murdered body, lying in a pool of blood at the bottom […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction Publisher description: North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), is firmly fixed in the Western imagination as a barbaric vestige of the Cold War, a “rogue” nation that refuses to abide by international norms. It is seen as belligerent and oppressive, a poor nation bent on depriving its citizens of their basic human […] (Link to online store) | |
Seo-u / Thou (K-Fiction 022) Synopsis pasted verbatim from Amazon.com Thou b The epicenter of ghost stories that began with “rumors of rumors of rumors” – In July 2018, “K-Fiction” Ganghwa road was elected as a “room” in the New Years edition of the Kyunghyang Newspaper in 2012 and started to work. He has been awarded the 8th Young Artist […] (Link to online store) | |
April Snow (K-Fiction 021) Synopsis pasted, in all its glorious Konglish, from Amazon.com: Snow of April b The story of people who feel the pain of others through their suffering b In April 2018, K-Fiction is the twenty-first piece, Son Won Pyung studied philosophy in sociology at the university and studied film directing at the Korean Film Academy. He […] (Link to online store) | |
Gendered Landscapes: Short Fiction by Modern and Contemporary Korean Women Novelists Gendered Landscapes presents ten short stories and novellas by representative modern Korean women writers dating from the 1930s to the end of the 1990s. Signature pieces selected from the acclaimed novelists’ repertoire, these narratives address issues related to Korean women as gendered beings in a Confucian-governed patriarchal society. Thematically interlinked and compellingly articulated, they bring […] (Link to online store) | |
King of Spies: The Dark Reign of America’s Spymaster in Korea From the publisher’s website: In King of Spies, prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of Escape From Camp 14, Blaine Harden, reveals one of the most astonishing – and previously untold – spy stories of the twentieth century. Donald Nichols was ‘a one man war’, according to his US Air Force commanding general. He won the Distinguished Service […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Reading Colonial Korea through Fiction: The Ventriloquists Publisher description: Reading Colonial Korea through Fiction is a compilation of thirteen original essays which was first serialized in a quarterly issued by the National Institute of Korean Language, Saekukŏsaenghwal (Living our National Language Anew) in a column entitled, “Our Fiction, Our Language” between 2004 to 2007. Although the original intent of the Institute was to elucidate on […] (Link to online store) | |
Not My White Savior: A Memoir in Poems A provocative and furious book about race, culture, identity and what it means to be an inter-country adoptee in America Julayne Lee was born in South Korea to a mother she never knew. When she was an infant, she was adopted by a white Christian family in Minnesota, where she was sent to grow up. Not […] (Link to online store) | |
We, Day by Day From the publisher’s website: Whether suturing NoHae Park and Pablo Neruda together in a cinematic sweep or refusing the global economy’s demands to rush and sign over one’s literary life, Jin’s portraiture is time illuminated by an intelligence committed to “how strange questions, fountains of brilliant blood, gush unceasingly in the boundless desert of answers.” (Link to online store) | |
Land of Tears Land of Tears is an anthology of short stories about the Korean experience of poverty and mental and physical anguish. Most of the stories have to do directly or indirectly with the Korean War. The stories depict the lives of a wide range of characters, such as a North Korean People’s Army soldier, a South […] (Link to online store) | |
A Black Kite From the publisher’s website: This selection from Kim Jong-Gil’s work contains just over 50 poems, written throughout his career and chosen by himself. The poems are those by which he wishes to be remembered. The topics are personal, often the result of a journey back to a place familiar in childhood, or of a moment […] (Link to online store) | |
Bitna: Under the Sky of Seoul Publisher description: The French writer and Nobel Literature laureate J. M. G. Le Clézio has harbored a keen interest in Korea that not only prompted him to learn and master the Korean language on his own but also inspired his new novel. Bitna: Under the Sky of Seoul is Le Clézio’s portrait of Seoul—its people and its […] (Link to online store) | |
The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down: How to be Calm in a Busy World From the publisher’s website: THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, WITH OVER THREE MILLION COPIES SOLD AROUND THE WORLD ‘Is it the world that’s busy, or my mind?’ The world moves fast, but that doesn’t mean we have to. In this timely guide to mindfulness, Haemin Sunim, a Buddhist monk born in Korea and educated in the United […] (Link to online store) | |
Dynamics of Expansion and Reduction – Selected Writings on Korean Contemporary Art Publisher description: This book, the first major publication in English devoted to the Korean critic and art historian Lee Yil, is a collection of texts on aesthetics, theory and history of art by the main observer of “Dansaekhwa”, or Korean monochrome. It also brings together essays and monographic prefaces that gave wide coverage to artists […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Whisper of Splendor From the publisher’s website: Whisper of Splendor brings about 60 poems from the author to demonstrate his poetic ideals and art. In the book, the reader notes the persona’s propensity to take away the tangled web of meanings that packs his consciousness, so that he can take in things as they are, as they move. Declining […] (Link to online store) | |
The Aphorisms of Yi Deok-mu: Musings of a Grateful Reader From the publisher’s website: This volume brings together excerpts from Seongyuldang nongso [蟬橘堂濃笑: The Inexorable Glee of Master Seongyuldang] and Imokgusimseo [耳目口心書: First-hand Observations] by the 18th-century scholar Yi Deok-mu. Seongyuldang nongso is a collection of Yi’s observations about life. In Imokgusimseo, Yi writes about what he heard, saw, said, and felt in the day-to-day. […] (Link to online store) | |
Premodern Korean Literary Prose: An Anthology This anthology presents new translations of Korean prose works from the tenth to the nineteenth century. It offers insight into past Korean societies by highlighting genres that have largely not been translated, such as diaries, short fictional biographies, erotic tales, oral narratives, and novellas, all of which illustrate the depth and variety of premodern Korean […] (Link to online store) | |
White Chrysanthemum Publisher description: ‘Look for your sister after each dive. Never forget. If you see her, you are safe.’ Hana and her little sister Emi are part of an island community of haenyo, women who make their living from diving deep into the sea off the southernmost tip of Korea. One day Hana sees a Japanese soldier […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
Paper From the publisher’s website: The image of paper, beautifully wrought as the controlling metaphor, runs through each poem sometimes to lament humanity lost over dazzling civilization, sometimes to call for restoration by means of everything good a sheet of paper symbolizes, all in a voice quite pithy and restrained. This poetry book is a grain […] (Link to online store) | |
Poems of the North From the publisher’s website: Treasured in both Koreas, Baek Seok: Poems of the North opens an intriguing gateway into the spirit of the North Koreans of the 1930’s-50’s. In a land struggling for freedom and short of food, he treats his readers to the dishes they craved, exhibiting a Korea not in mired in the […] (Link to online store) | |
The Scorpion In mainstream literature, it is not unusual to find a great novel whose themes are simultaneously universal and local. humanity and the human condition can be represented through characters and events that reflect the environment of an author living in a specific time and place. In the case of The Scorpion, the 13th novel by […] | |
The Boy who Escaped Paradise An unidentified body is discovered in New York City, with numbers and symbols are written in blood near the corpse. Gil-mo, a North Korean national who interprets the world through numbers, formulas, and mathematical theories, is arrested on the spot. Angela, a CIA operative, is assigned to gain his trust and access his unique persona. […] (Link to online store) LKL Review | |
An Unknown Realm (K-Fiction 020) Synopsis not available Not readily available in the UK (Link to online store) |
