The JoongAng Daily reports that, “Korea has been invited to the 2016 Paris Book Fair as a distinguished guest and will participate in the event which will be held from Thursday to Sunday in Paris.” The JoongAng notes that, “60 books from 30 Korean writers will be displayed, including those of Hwang Sok-young, Han Kang,…
Convalescence, by Han Kang, is perhaps her most formulaic work in translation – it fits it well with late Pak Wansuh’s Identical Apartments: Jeon Seung-hee’s “Kong’s Garden, Bae Suah’s Green Apples; and a host of novellas that all essentially tell the same story, albeit in slightly different ways – the story of the alienation of the young woman…
NOTE: If you’re in Seoul you can see Han Kang in person (bilingually) at the Seoul ABC Book club, which I will be moderating. As its title suggests Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is a meditation on appetites – ones that society can’t fill and the implications of not “swallowing” what society offers. The tale…
Cheon Myeong-kwan’s Modern Family (고령화 가족 or “Aging Family” in Korean) is a novelistic Korean soap-opera with a bad attitude. How much of a soap-opera? The narrator, In-mo, a failed director and divorced alcoholic consistently explicitly compares the twists and turns of his family life to one, and at one point even prays for divine…
It’s difficult to place Homecoming by Cheon Myeong-Kwan (Asia Publishers) as either a Super-dystopic, after the crash novel or as a rugged individualist story in which hard work is rewarded and sloth discarded in the most horrible way. OK, no it’s not, it’s a super-dystopic view of what would happen in Seoul if the continuing…
A while ago on this blog I was semi-complaining about the cover for Kyung-sook Shin’s new book. You can see that semi-whine here. So it was with great happiness that I show the following two book covers for Han Kang’s awesome and terrifying novel Vegetarian. While the Shin cover is cliches in search of a…
The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee (translated by Chi-Young Kim) has been longlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. KTLIT really liked this book when it first came out, saying it was, “a crime-thriller, wrapped in a historical novel, with strong aspirations to literary fiction.” It’s a really great story, and among stiff competition (The dread…
In at least two previous posts I mentioned a post at The Society Pages which parses the orientalist cliches used in many “Asian” book-covers. I also noted this hadn’t seemed to take hold in Korean translations just yet (or at least the ones I have). Now, though… well.. let’s take a look. The Society Pages suggests the cliches…
The short story has always been the highest form of modern literature in Korea, and Jung Mi-Kyung’s My Son’s Girlfriend (Part of the awesome LTI Korea / Dalkey Archive Press effort) is a powerful argument for it. My Son’s Girlfriend contains seven stories all of which hit, in various ways, at the alienation of modern life and…
Pre-pro-tips: If you like Guide to Seoul Cave you can purchase Kim Mi-wol’s What is Yet to Happen, a cool (if that’s the word) pre-apocalyptic story here. Also, you can follow KTLIT on twitter @ktlit. Of course, the title to Kim Mi-wol’s Guide to Seoul Cave (available thanks to Brother Anthony’s hompi) gives away the point she…