My Clint Eastwood, by Oh Han-Ki was perhaps the most difficult of the ASIA Publishers K-Fiction series for me to read, partly because for my entire life Clint Eastwood has been an icon to me and one of the things that Oh Han-ki ruthlessly explores is the difference between the concept of the “icon” and the…
British Novelist Oyeyemi to Visit Korea to Reveal Her Literary Worldview, oh, yeah… the ice-cream on the cake? Kim Young-ha! Posted on October 1, 2014 by Korea Bizwire in Culture & Society, Editor’s Choice with 0 Comments Partly amusing because the idea of a “non-Korean” (meaning non-white or not ethnic Korean) being chosen as a…
(With apologies to DUMBFOUNDEAD for stealing a title) On the road for vacation and, as always, checking local bookstores for Korean literature. This time (as last time) I stopped in at Eastwind Books, whose motto is: Bookselling since 1982: Asian American literature, Asian Studies, Ethnic Studies, Language Learning, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Martial Arts, Qigong, Children’s Books,…
The Investigation, by Jung-myung Lee, is a crime-thriller, wrapped in a historical novel, with strong aspirations to literary fiction. It hits the first two points straight on the head, making it an ideal beach read for what remains of this summer. If it partially fails at its greater literary intention, it is not for lack of…
If you don’t like a stacked deck, you may not like Gong Ji-Young’s Our Happy Time. While Gong does write a cracking tale, she piles freighted detail upon freighted detail, and horrible history upon horrible history, to ensure that the reader has no emotional wiggle-room with her characters. With that said, it’s a compelling read…
Coming up next at Korea.net, “People Begin to Party like it’s 1999!” LOL… sometimes you just have to wonder what is going on in the minds of Koreans who like translated Modern Korean literature, or Korean literature in English. On June 24, 2014, Korea.net breathlessly reports, in an article titled Korean novels in English: ‘A Sketch of The Fading…
Some fellow over on a website I’ve never even heard about, is threatening to win the LTI Korea, Bae Suah, Highway With Green Apples contest! Only you can defeat this jerk, and it’s easy (just see below). First, here is one of his “draft” attempts.. a song to win the award. He promises to show…
Jo Jung-Rae‘s (the name is different on the book, Cho Chongnae, however KTLIT uses the authors preferred Romanization as determined by the authoritative page at LTI Korea) How in Heaven’s Name: A Novel of World War Two, is available now. Unusually, it is a novel of World War II, an era that is not that…
This only gets 4.5 because she’s got a better one behind her (Waxen Wings, the title short story of the recent collection Waxen Wings, which is currently the best short collection of Korean fiction for the casual reader). But it is a doozy that manages to combine the idea of life as a hopeless maze…
1) “Wherever you go? There you are.” This was a difficult book to review, paradoxically because I liked it so much^^. And it is currently available on Amazon UK NOT the root Amazon site. Kyung-Sook Shin’s I’ll Be Right There (Originally titled: 어디선가 나를 찾는 전화벨이 울리고, or something like “Somewhere the Phone is Ringing”)…