Scenes from the Enlightenment: A Novel of Manners was published in 1939, toward the end of the Japanese colonial period in Korea, and depicts seemingly trivial events in the lives of the residents of a small town northeast of Pyongyang: a wedding between two local families, the arrival of box upon box of fascinating new Western products at the Japanese-run general store, a long-awaited athletics meet held at the local school. But in these events, and in the changing familial and social relationships that underpin them, we see a picture of a changing Korea on the cusp of modernity. When two...
Scenes from the Enlightenment: A Novel of Manners was published in 1939, toward the end of the Japanese colonial period in Korea, and depicts seemi...
Rina is a defector from a country that might be North Korea, traversing an "empty and futile" landscape. Along the way, she is forced to work at a chemical plant, murders a few people, becomes a prostitute, runs a lucrative bar, and finds a solace in a motley family of wanderers all as disenfranchised as she. Brutal and unflinching, with elements of the mythic and grotesque interspersed with hard-edged realism, Rina is a pioneering work of Korean postmodernism.
Rina is a defector from a country that might be North Korea, traversing an "empty and futile" landscape. Along the way, she is forced to work at a che...
"The Private Life of Plants" is about the ways in which desire can both worsen and mitigate our flaws. We meet amputee sons whose mothers cart them from brothel to brothel; we meet brothers who love their brother's lovers, and whose lovers in turn are stolen away by the husbands of their sisters. Sexuality in all its ugliness and wonder is put under the microscope by Lee Seung-U, who reminds us that love may come in various forms, but that it is, nonetheless, a force that unifies us all . . . whether we like it or not.
"The Private Life of Plants" is about the ways in which desire can both worsen and mitigate our flaws. We meet amputee sons whose mothers cart them fr...
The nine stories that make up this collection depict a wide variety of contemporary Koreans navigating a world focused on material wealth and social power, in which family ties have been disrupted and all relationships are dysfunctional. Unpredictable and enigmatic, these tales, though taking place in what would appear to be a shallow, materialistic environment, are nonetheless woven through with rich threads of imagination and fantasy: parables for the self-help age.
The nine stories that make up this collection depict a wide variety of contemporary Koreans navigating a world focused on material wealth and social p...
This collection of eight stories--cynical and sympathetic by turns--represents the author's attempt to document and understand the conflicts, resentments, hatreds, and anxieties of contemporary family life. The title story depicts a mother's busy day playing numerous roles--ashamed, fearless, or humble--depending on which member of her family she's tending to. In "The Privacy of My Father," a daughter tracks her father to Hong Kong in order to spy on what she thinks is an illicit affair. All in all, says Seo Hajin, family means deception--but these masks aren't so easily removed.
This collection of eight stories--cynical and sympathetic by turns--represents the author's attempt to document and understand the conflicts, resentme...
