Amazingly happy news at a US bookstore! Meeting one of my ex-students from Dongguk University, and we chose to meet for coffee at a bookstore with a coffeeshop in the back. I walk into the front door of the Elliot Bay Bookstore (an unbelievably great bookstore in Seattle, WA. Address: 1521 10th Ave, Seattle, WA 98122 Phone: (206) 624-6600 – No, really, you go to Seattle you HAVE to check these folks out!)
And immediately run into the “New Fiction” table with the books they are pimping. On the front table…. I look at the third book you see as you enter the store.
FACING THE DOOR
3RD BOOK!
Han Kang’s Vegetarian with five copies right there. Now, it’s the version with the(least interesting cover (really, Korean translation needs to fix this problem, and fast), so it wasn’t exactly an eye-catcher, but it was there. Here is an extremely happy idiot taking a look.
I didn’t have much time, so I ran up to the front counter and just had them check a few more names. Kim Young-ha’s I Have The Right To Destroy Myself is also available, though it was currently out of stock. They have Kyung-Sook Shin’s Please Look After Mom right there amongst the “normal” fiction. The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness (again Shin) right there also, and check this out.. I’ll Be Right There available for quick order AND about to come out as an audio book on CD!!!
“I’ll Be Right There” Available in US!
Son of Man by Yi Munyol – THERE ON THE SHELVES!! And Yi Munyoll’s Our Twisted Hero available in less that one week’s shipping
I, ABSOLUTELY, didn’t believe it.
Could it be happening?
Now I can’t wait to get to Powell’s in Portland and see how widespread this might be becoming.
But for now.. props to everyone involved, the authors, often brutally under-appreciated translators, LTI Korea, publishers, agents, and anyone who has spent the last few years working for this kind of outcome!!
Maybe I should write and article for the Herald or some local paper.^^
For now, I just couldn’t sleep.^^
