(NOTE: This post is a Valentines’ Day post that changes from time to time, so any feedback or additions are welcome) Some time back, regular reader and man of international mystery “Charles” (the other) asked me about Korea love stories. And it brought me up a bit short, because I had a bit of difficulty…
FIND OUT TOMORROW!! How old do you think the people in that picture to the right are? That’s the picture of Sonagi from Google’s page honoring Hwang Sun-won on his recent birthday. But those people are at least 14, possibly even 15 or 16? Why does it matter? Because that’s how English-language readers often think…
A Ready Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction, selected and translated by Kim Chongun and Bruce Fulton (and as usual a brilliant translation!) is a collection of stories written during the Korean colonial period (1910-45). With a very few exceptions it is a great collection, and would be a good starting point for…
OK, here is where any feedback might be useful. After my lecture in Kuala Lumpur I realized I never explicitly laid out the themes and approaches of Korean Modern Literature, so on the plane on the way back I punched this out. We’re starting to get a bit out of order here.^^ Anyway, any feedback,…
The following are the stories I will focus on in second section of my upcoming presentations. The first presentation will be at 10 AM on February 7th. I will be presenting at the International Islamic University in Kuala Lumpur. Then, on March 31st, I will be doing an updated (and road-tested!) version of the presentation…
Regular readers will recall my fulminating about works that have been re-translated and re-translated and one of the examples I frequently use in lecture is Hwang Sun-won’s (an excellent writer in translation, in general) Sonagi. However, as I’m sorting through an appallingly large set of abstracts to edit, I come across this (Attentive readers will…
The Descendants of Cain is one of the great stories of the society-shredding arrival of communism to North Korea and it is strongly informed by author Hwang Sun-won’s personal experiences at that time and in that situation. Hwang was a landlord’s son during the time of post-war social turmoil and his family was forced to…
Every Tuesday I will be on at about 10:05 discussing various things having to do with Korean literature. Today I will be talking about excellent Korean author Hwang Sun-Won who has written the following things (among others) The Book of Masks (short stories) The Descendants of Cain (novel) The Moving Castle (novel) Shadows of a…
Hwang Sun-won’s The Moving Castle is a brilliant work, which aspires to achieve much, and achieves it. The Moving Castle is literary fiction in the best sense of the phrase. It is Dickensian in scale, attempting to describe an entire society and its interactions, even, with the larger world, and at the same time populating…
There are two different versions of this book, Trees on a Slope, translated by Bruce Fulton, and Trees on the Cliff, translated by Chang Wang-rok. I read the latter version, partly because I believe its translated title is more reflective of the story told here, even if it is a bit less literal (Literally, Trees…