There’s a nice feature on Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko in last weekend’s New York Times. I enjoyed the book myself though never got around to writing a review. It’s a very different work from her first novel, Free Food for Millionaires, which I described as a combination of Sex and the City and Wall Street, and … [Read More]
Category: General book news (page 6)
Han Kang launches her White Book in London & Manchester
Waterstones will be hosting events to celebrate the launch of Han Kang’s White Book this month. I fear the London event seems to be booked out already, but you can always go up to Manchester: Han Kang in conversation With Max Porter, London Tottenham Court Road, 13 Nov 6:30pm Details With Deborah Smith, Manchester Deansgate, … [Read More]
A Korea focus in this week’s TLS
This week’s Times Literary Supplement (26 May 2017) contains no fewer than four Korea-related article-reviews: Min Jin Lee on Bandi’s The Accusation (Serpent’s Tail) (LKL review here), JM Lee’s The Boy who Escaped Paradise (Norton), Yi Mun-yol’s Meeting with my Brother (Columbia) and Jieun Baek’s North Korea’s Hidden Revolution (Yale) Houman Barekat on Han Yujoo’s … [Read More]
Event news: Undercover in Pyongyang – a discussion at Asia House
This year’s Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival brings us two talks with a Korean interest. The second of these is a discussion of North Korean issues between Suki Kim, author of Without You, There Is No Us (LKL review here) and Paul French, author of North Korea: State of Paranoia. Sin Cities: Undercover in … [Read More]
Event news: Reflections on the East Asian 20th Century, at Asia House
This year’s Asia House Bagri Foundation Literature Festival brings us two talks with a Korean interest. The first of these is a conversation between Min Jin Lee (LKL review of her debut novel Free Food for Millionaires here) and former Man Booker Prize for Fiction judge Erica Wagner. Reflections on the East Asian 20th Century Min Jin … [Read More]
Modern Poetry in Translation – the Korean issue
The latest volume of Modern Poetry in Translation magazine has a focus on Korean poetry. The subtitle of the issue is The Blue Vein – a reference to a line from Kim Hyesoon’s work included in the volume. “Every morning the sky, the blue vein slaps you hard.” The extract is from Kim Hyesoon’s latest … [Read More]
Event news: Deborah Smith on translating Bae Suah
Deborah Smith’s latest Bae Suah translation, Recitation, is now available in bookshops. This month you have the opportunity to hear some of the challenges of translating it, courtesy of SOAS’s Centre for Translation Studies: Close to a State of Linguistic Weightlessness: On Translating Bae Suah Dr Deborah Smith (Korean-English translator, Publisher/Editor at Tilted Axis Press) … [Read More]
New and upcoming non-fiction titles for 2017
As a follow up to my post on literature and fiction titles coming up in 2017 (now updated twice), here are some of the upcoming non-fiction publications that I’ll be looking out for. There are of course many others: simply do an advanced search on Amazon with keyword “Korea” and publication year 2017 and you may … [Read More]
New and upcoming literature and fiction titles for 2017 [updated]
![Thumbnail for post: New and upcoming literature and fiction titles for 2017 [updated]](https://londonkoreanlinks.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2017-titles-500x455-1-120x120.jpg)
As I’ve been looking back at the books of 2016 I realise that there are a few recent publications I missed. Here are some of them, along with some that are advertised to be out this year. I do wish there was a decent source to tell you what’s new or coming up soon. Publishers’ … [Read More]
Choigate and Park Geun-hye’s censorship of the arts – contd
A couple more links relating to censorship under Park Geun-hye, which will be updated as news breaks. First, a re-post of the pdf purporting to be the blacklist of 9,473 names, first posted here. 10 Jan 2017: Via Br Anthony comes the “appalling news … that [Park] personally gave orders that the two most important … [Read More]
Choigate, censorship and the arts
At any other time the presence of a demonstrator outside the KCC – and outside the opening screening of the London Korean Film Festival – protesting about artistic censorship that is said to have taken place during the current KCC director’s stint at the National Gugak Centre would have been prominent news. But choreographer Jung … [Read More]
Inspector O in NYT feature
There’s a nice feature on James Church and his Inspector O series in the NYT. Well worth a read, as are the books themselves. Here’s a good quote from the article: “If you want to understand North Korea then you need to read Inspector O,” said Michael Madden, who has spent years studying the North … [Read More]
Krys Lee featured in the Guardian
There’s a really good interview with Krys Lee (Drifting House, How I Became a North Korean) in The Guardian: “The acclaimed short story writer talks about her debut novel, trying to understand her violent father and moving back from the US to South Korea”. The novel is available on Amazon from 18 August. Krys Lee … [Read More]
Anti-Americanism in Democratizing South Korea
This book by David Straub, head of the political section in the US Embassy in Seoul 1999-2002, has just gone onto my wishlist. Reviews by Aidan Foster Carter in the Korea JoongAng Daily and by Bradley K Martin in Asia Times. Available from Amazon.co.uk. Published by Stanford’s Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and distributed by the … [Read More]
Those foreigner-friendly cookery books keep on coming…
Time was when you really couldn’t lay your hands on a cookery book focusing on Korean food that was written by someone who understood the UK market. We were all waiting for Judy Joo’s Korean Food Made Simple – which according to Amazon was published on 19 May this year, though it was available on … [Read More]
Han Kang’s Vegetarian wins the Man Booker International Prize
The news that Han Kang and Deborah Smith had won the Man Booker International prize for The Vegetarian, sharing £50,000 between them, reached me on Tuesday morning, 17th May, in a hotel room of a vast Lotte resort celebrating Baekje cultural heritage just outside of Buyeo, Chungcheongnamdo. I saw the news on Facebook, and just … [Read More]