Join bestselling writer Yu Miri and her translator Morgan Giles as they present Yu’s latest novel to be translated into English, The End of August. In 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea, Lee Woo-Cheol is a running prodigy and a contender for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics – but only if he runs under the Japanese flag. Nearly a … [Read More]
Category: Fiction in other languages
What have we been reading in 2019? Here are the highs and lows of our reading diary
I alternate my reading, on no systematic basis, between fiction and non-fiction, trying to maintain a balance between keeping up to date with the most important new publications and working through the guilt pile of past publications that I failed to read when they came out. I don’t have time to read much apart from … [Read More]
Book review: Kim Sok-pom — The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost
Kim Sok-pom: The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost Translated by Cindi Textor Columbia University Press, 2010 (114pp) Originally published in Japanese, 1970. What seems to be new entrant in the Korean literature in translation market is more complicated than it first seems. The author, Kim Sok-pom, is actually a second-generation zainichi Korean resident in Japan, … [Read More]
1948 Cheju uprising remembered in newly-translated novel
Looks like an interesting new book about to hit UK bookshops on 29 September, from Columbia University Press: The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost by Kim Sok-pom 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 … [Read More]
Yuasa Katsuei: a Japanese colonial novelist
Yuasa Katsuei: Two Japanese Colonial Novels Kannani (1934), Document of Flames (1935). Translated by Mark Driscoll, Duke University Press (2005) Yuasa Katsuei was born in Japan in 1910 and before his second birthday moved to Korea where his father worked in the colonial police force. He went to university in Tokyo from 1929, before returning … [Read More]
Kajiyama Toshiyuki: The Clan Records – Five Stories of Korea
The Clan Records – Five Stories of Korea: The Clan Records | Seeking Life Amidst Death: The Last Day of the War | When the Hibiscus Blooms | The Remembered Shadow of the Yi Dynasty | A Crane on a Dunghill: Seoul in 1936 Kajiyama Toshiyuki, translated by Yoshiko Dykstra (University of Hawaii Press, 1995) … [Read More]