City Literature: LARB Blog

It’s my bi-weekly piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books Korea Blog. This week the article is BRIGHT LIES,

Big City, Big Angst

Big City, Big Angst!

BIG CITY: KOREAN AUTHORS AND SEOUL. Below you will find additional information on the books/stories I mentioned on the LARB Blog

.Here’s an excerpt and below that the information on all the works mentioned in the piece.

Excerpt:

The Korean relationship with big cities, particularly Seoul, mixes love with a strong undercurrent of hate. The love of Seoul is often clear: when I first got a job in Korea, which was in Daejeon, I called my best friend, who is Korean. Happy to hear that I got a job, he told the news to his wife, also Korean. “Where is the job?” he then asked. Woosong University in Daejeon, I replied, which he also dutifully relayed to his wife. In the background I could hear a small commotion, which was shortly interrupted by my best friend’s wife grabbing the phone from his hands and loudly yelling into it, “Why didn’t you get a job in Seoul? You won’t understand Korea unless you live in Seoul!”
To read more you must click here^^

 

Works discussed on LARB blog (with links to reviews on KTLit on the title, links to Amazon at the bottom of each entry).

The Soil, Yi Kwang-Su
Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press (November 16, 2013)
ISBN-13: 978-1564789112
Available on Amazon

A Day in the Life of Kubo the Novelist, Park Taewon
In On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea
Paperback: 284 pages
Publisher: Cornell East Asia Series; Hardcover edition (May 15, 2010)
ISBN-13: 978-1933947495
Available on Amazon

Seoul: 1964, Winter, Sung-ok Kim
In Modern Korean Fiction An Anthology
Paperback: 408 pages
Publisher: Columbia University Press (August 3, 2005)
ISBN-13: 978-0231135139
Available on Amazon
OR
Online as a PDF from the Korea Journal
OR (if you are rich) on Amazon (Don’t do it!^^)
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The Dwarf
, Cho Se-hui
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press (September 29, 2006)
ISBN-13: 978-0824831011
Available on Amazon (Kindle also)

A Distant and Beautiful PlaceYang Kwi-ja
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press (December 1, 2002)
ISBN-13: 978-0824826390
Available on Amazon

Please Look After Mom, Shin-Kyoung Sook
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (April 3, 2012)
ISBN-13: 978-0307739513
Available on Amazon (Kindle also)

Kong’s Garden (Bilingual), Hwang Jung-Eun
Paperback: 116 pages
Publisher: Asia Publishers (2015)
ISBN-13: 979-1156621164
Available on Amazon

Homecoming (Bilingual), Cheon Myeong-kwan
Paperback: 116 pages
Publisher: Asia Publishers (2015)
ISBN-13: 979-1156621188