Kim Won-il looks at 80 years of Korean modern history, presenting us with the less glamorous side of the story in a novel that spans three generations of a Milyang-based family who are swept along in the political and economic tides of the colonial period and Korea’s subsequent reconstruction. [Read More]
Category: Book Reviews (page 2)
A review of the Korean cultural year 2021
Each year when I come to write this review, I wonder whether Korean culture in the West has reached its high water mark. And every year so far I’ve come to the same conclusion. Korean music and film, TV and food continue to win admirers, and we can expect to see it continue to thrive … [Read More]
A look back at our 2021 reading diary
Looking back at this year, it’s been one of the best for new translations of Korean literature that I can remember. There have been at least ten new fiction titles, and unusually for me I managed to get through all the titles I was intending to. All of them are recommendable in their different ways. … [Read More]
Review: Kim Bo-young – On the Origin of Species and other stories
After the mild disappointment that was the audiobook of Kim Bo-young’s I’m Waiting for You (let down by the somewhat unwieldy story The Prophet of Corruption) it was with a slight sense of wariness that I embarked upon the Kaya collection of her short stories On the Origin of Species. I was also cautious because … [Read More]
Review: Hwang Sok-yong – The Prisoner
How to review the autobiography of one of Korean’s leading novelists, who has won accclaim both sides of the border; who has spent five years in prison as well as being a person of interest to the authorities for much of his professional career? The memoir makes for fascinating reading as literary history: most of … [Read More]
Review: Kim Bo-young – I’m Waiting for You, and other stories
Genuine question: what was the first work of translated Korean fiction to be released as an audiobook? I don’t know the answer to that one. Browsing the Audible catalogue is not easy, but I suspect Penguin wins the prize. Two popular titles published by Penguin – Kim Ji-young, born 1982 and The Hen who dreamed … [Read More]
Book review: Kwon Yeo-sun – Lemon
Someone, somewhere, must have done a study of multi-person narratives in Korean fiction – novels which tell the same story (or different episodes involving the same characters) from two or more different perspectives. Two of the best-loved Korean novels in translation use the technique: Please Look After Mother and The Vegetarian. And this year, we’ve … [Read More]
Book review: Kim Soom – One Left
When the issue of comfort women has been with us since the Pacific War, to re-emerge in 1991 when Kim Haksun came forward as the first to announce herself as victim, it is astonishing that we had to wait until 2016 for what is, according to Bonnie Oh’s introduction (p ix), “the first Korean novel … [Read More]
Michael Gibb’s Korean Odyssey: a great way to enjoy Korea without the the visa and quarantine
If I were to win an insane amount of money on the lottery, here’s how I might spend it. I’d charter a boat (and crew – I’m no sailor), and maybe a guide / interpreter, and go on a slow sea voyage for a couple of months from Busan to Mokpo, taking in some of … [Read More]
Bae Myung-hoon’s Tower could be the most fun thing you read this year
Bae Myung-hoon’s Tower is the first of several science fiction books to reach us this year, and if the rest are as good as this we’re in for an enjoyable time. It’s his first full-length work to be translated into English, and also translator Sung Ryu’s first book. She has two further titles coming out … [Read More]
Book review: Yi In-hwa’s Everlasting Empire
Some time ago I watched Park Chong-wan’s 1995 historical mystery movie Eternal Empire on DVD, having purchased it on the strength of its inclusion in Darcy Paquet’s list of top films from the 1990s. I must have been tired when I watched it: I simply have no recollection of what I thought of it, though … [Read More]
A look back at our 2020 reading diary
Like many readers, we started the year with good intention of blitzing through the pile of new titles that were promised for the coming months, as well as making inroads into the backlog. And we genuinely got off to a good start with a string of fun K-thrillers, some of them new, some not: The … [Read More]
Review: City of Ash and Red
City of Ash and Red is a novel for 2020, even though it was originally published in 2010. Inspired no doubt in part by the SARS outbreak of 2002-3, Pyun Hye-young imagines a world where a virus has the potential to shut down whole countries, in which visitors are tested for infection on arrival at … [Read More]
Review: Na Man’gap – the Diary of 1636
Na Man’gap’s Diary of 1636, as George Kallander explains in his informative introduction, is the longest known private account of the second Manchu invasion of Korea. Na (1592 – 1642) was a senior scholar-official who was with the King and court inside Namhansanseong – he was in charge of military rations – throughout the siege … [Read More]
Review: Pyun Hye-young – The Law of Lines
Life was much deeper than he could ever imagine. It was impossible to tell just how far you could sink1 Two apparent suicides in different parts of the country kick-start two separate story-lines which turn out to be interlinked. Se-oh is the daughter of one of the deceased – a man who had fallen into … [Read More]
Brief review: Kim Sagwa – b, Book, and Me
To answer the obvious question that you’re going to be asked when trying to order this item at your local bookstore, “b” and “Book” are the names of two characters in the novel. We’re not told about how b came by her name, but Book is so called because he spends all his time reading, primarily … [Read More]