Yona has been stuck behind a desk for years working as a programming coordinator for Jungle, a travel company specialising in package holidays to destinations ravaged by disaster. When a senior colleague touches her inappropriately she tries to complain, and in an attempt to bury her allegations, the company make her an attractive proposition: a … [Read More]
Category: Fiction
February Literature Night: The Age of Doubt by Pak Kyongni
The Age of Doubt collects some of Pak Kyongni’s most famous works, including her 1955 debut and other stories featuring characters that would appear in her 21-volume epic, T’oji. Many of Pak’s stories reflect her own turbulent experiences during the period following the Korean war and the various Korean dictatorships throughout the twentieth century. Pak … [Read More]
Review: Cho Nam-joo – Saha
After the domestic success of Kim Ji-young (2016; English translation by Jamie Chang published in 2020), and of its encouraging sales overseas, it was natural that Cho Nam-joo’s next novel would attract interest. Accordingly, Saha had a slightly shorter journey from Korean into English: after an original publication date in 2019 its English translation came … [Read More]
Book review: Seo Su-jin – Korean Teachers
After what was a fairly downbeat reading experience for us last year, quite by chance we came across the first publication of translated Korean literature from Singapore’s Harriet Press, released without our noticing it in March 2022. Seo Sujin’s debut novel Korean Teachers won the Hankyoreh Literature Award in 2020, and it is encouraging that … [Read More]
Lee Hyemi shortlisted for Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation
Congratulations to poet Lee Hyemi, translator Soje and the pioneering Tilted Axis Press for being shortlisted for the 2022 Sarah Maguire Prize for Poetry in Translation with the collection Unexpected Vanilla, published in 2020. Awarded every two years, the prize honours the best book of poetry by a living poet from Africa, Asia, Latin America … [Read More]
Unexpected Vanilla – poetry talks and events
About Unexpected Vanilla A sensual, surrealist collection by a young feminist poet, in an equally sensuous and sensitive queer translation. Lee explores a wide variety of relationships, attractions, and sensations. Her erotically charged, surrealist sensibility can be traced back to the paintings of Leonor Fini, a bisexual Argentinian artist whom she admires. Lee subverts the … [Read More]
Review: JM Lee — Broken Summer
A seemingly ideal partnership between a successful artist and a doting wife who is also his manager suddenly dissolves when the wife walks out without warning, leaving behind a surprise which the artist knows will shortly destroy his reputation and career. The artist had clearly been living a lie, with his wife plotting his destruction … [Read More]
A discussion with poet Hakjung Kim
In August we will have a special event as a part of our Korean Literature Night (KLN) with poet Hakjung Kim and this event will be presented at the KCCUK. Poet Hakjung Kim will share his thoughts about why writing as a minority voice in contemporary Korea matters. With the moderator Eugene Kim, Hakjung Kim … [Read More]
August Literature Night: Pachinko and Kim Jiyoung Born 1982
This August we will read the novel ‘Pachinko’ by Min Jin Lee and ‘Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982’ by Cho Nam-Joo. This month will also feature a special discussion Zoom event, with all participants able to turn on the camera, speak, and discuss the work during the talk. Prof. Jieun Kiaer (Professor of Korean Language and … [Read More]
Brief review: Concerning My Daughter
Kim Hye-jin’s Concerning My Daughter is set in a world of agency workers, where no-one has enough money, still less any job security; a world in which a university lecturer gets fired for being gay; a world in which a nursing home asks their staff to cut down on basic hygiene tasks and neglect their … [Read More]
May Literature Night: Winter in Sokcho
The Korean Literature Night is a monthly discussion group that explores various themes and topics relating to that month’s chosen book. For May we will read the novel Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin. Author Elisa Shua Dusapin and translator Aneesa Abbas Higgins will join us for a live virtual talk about the novel ‘Winter … [Read More]
Two doomed love affairs by Choi Eun-young and Shin Kyung-sook
A parallel review of Shin Kyung-sook’s The Place where the Harmonium Was and Choi Eun-young’s The Summer. Two vivid depictions of the joy and pain of relationships. The Summer is a straightforward and immediately appealing read; The Harmonium is more difficult but nevertheless rewarding. [Read More]
Brief review: June Hur – The Silence of Bones
My reading diary so far this year has been getting me rather bogged down. In part that’s because there seems to be so little time for reading nowadays, and partly because my choice of reading material has been overly serious and lengthy. First was The Scorpion, a 400-plus page novel from the rather dour genre … [Read More]
April Korean Literature Night: Shoko’s Smile
Shoko’s Smile A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of Korea’s most prominent young writers. In crisp, unembellished prose, Choi Eunyoung paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows … [Read More]
Book review: Kim Won-il – The Scorpion
Kim Won-il looks at 80 years of Korean modern history, presenting us with the less glamorous side of the story in a novel that spans three generations of a Milyang-based family who are swept along in the political and economic tides of the colonial period and Korea’s subsequent reconstruction. [Read More]
March Korean Literature Night: The Road to Sampo
This March we will read the novel ‘The Road to Sampo’ by Hwang Sok-yong. This month will also feature a special discussion Zoom event, with all participants able to turn on the camera, speak, and discuss the work during the talk. Prof. Jieun Kiaer (Associate Professor of Korean Language and Linguistics, University of Oxford) will … [Read More]