The latest addition to my website is Cheon Myeong-Kwan‘s 고래 (Whale). This is an incredibly complicated and, at times, improbable story about various characters during the second part of the 20th century. Geumbok escapes her brutal father, with the aid of an itinerant fishmonger who, thanks to Geumbok’s entrepreneurial skills, becomes rich but loses her … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Un Su Kim‘s 벗 캐비닛 (The Cabinet). This is a wildly inventive novel, telling of Deok-geun Kong, a South Korean office worker, who gets involved in a project to document all cases of symptomers, those people who show signs of abnormal behaviours. These range from people who survive … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Choi Jin-young‘s 해가 지는 곳으로 (To the Warm Horizon). This is the first full-blown pandemic novel I have read since covid but do not let that put you off as it is very good novel, first published in 2017. We follow a major pandemic – people often die … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yun Ko-eun‘s 밤의 여행자들 (The Disaster Tourist). Yona works for Jungle, a Korean disaster tourism company. When she has problems at work with her boss, she is sent to evaluate a project in Mui, Vietnam, which seems disappointing. However, on the return journey, she gets separated from her … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hye Young-Pyun‘s 선의 법칙 (The Law of Lines). This is another first-class novel from the South Korean writer. It tells the tales of two young women who both have tragedies. In one case her house burns down and her father is badly burned and later dies. In the … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Kim Sagwa‘s 나b책 (b, Book and Me). The novel tells the story of three Korean misfits, b, Book and Rang (the me of the title). Rang is badly bullied at school by the baseball boys. b’s family is very poor and she and Rang become friends till they … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hwang Sok-yong‘s 해질무렵 (At Dusk). This is a superb book about an architect who, though successful, is a bit lost in his life, his wife having left him, his friends dying and his increasing concern about declining values. He receives a note asking him to phone a number … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hye Young-Pyun‘s 재와 빨강 (City of Ash and Red). This a grim Kafkaesque story about an unnamed man from an unnamed country, who works for a pesticide company. He is sent to the head office of the company, which is located in another country, where he barely speaks … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Yi Mun-Yol‘s 아우와의만남 (An Appointment with My Brother; later: Meeting with My Brother), a new translation of a book that was previously published in English as An Appointment with My Brother. It is partially based on the life of the author. In real life, his father defected to … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Hwang Jungeun‘s 百의 그림자 (One Hundred Shadows). This is a very original work, which has had considerable success in South Korea, about very ordinary people in South Korea, whose shadows behave erratically. This may mean rising up or even detaching themselves from their owners. There is no obvious … Read more