Korean Literary Fiction

Kim Ronyoung (Gloria Hahn, 1926-1987) tells the story of Haesu and Chun, immigrants who fled Japanese-occupied Korea for Los Angeles in the decade prior to World War II, and their American-born children. First published in 1986, Clay Walls offers a portrait of what being Korean in California meant in the first half of the twentieth century and how these immigrants’ nationalist spirit helped them withstand racism and poverty.

Snow Hunters traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, who defects from his country at the end of the Korean War, leaving his friends and family behind to seek a new life on the coast of Brazil. Throughout his years there, four people slip in and out of his life: Kiyoshi, the Japanese tailor for whom he works; Peixe, the groundskeeper at the town church; and two vagrant children named Santi and Bia. Yohan longs to connect with these people, but to do so he must let go of his traumatic past.

Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea's most prominent families. Jangmi has had to fend for herself since childhood, most recently by smuggling goods across the border. Danny is a Chinese American teenager of North Korean descent whose quirks and precocious intelligence have long marked him as an outcast in his California high school. These three disparate lives converge when each of them travels to the region where China borders North Korea.

두려움, 회피, 슬픔 등 음식으로 나쁜 기억을 치유할 순 없을까? 심리적 편식은 '나쁜 습관'이 아닌, '아픈 기억'이라는 말이 있다. 아픈 몸을 의사가 치료하듯 아픈 기억은 요리사가 치료해줄 수 있지 않을까 하는 생각에서 이 이야기는 시작된다.

Timely and unique, Jia is the first novel about present-day North Korea to be published in the West. It is easily a YA crossover novel as Jia follows the adventures of an orphaned young woman, Jia in the 1970s and 1980s - bitterly tumultuous times for North Korea and China. Jia has the grace of a dancer but the misfortune of coming from a politically suspect family.

Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad's disappearance; he can't even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player. So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the US government to deport him to South Korea, he's forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life.

In a Seoul slum marked for demolition, residents’ shadows have begun to rise. No one knows how or why—but, they warn each other, do not follow your shadow if it wanders away. Employees of a small electronics repair shop, Eungyo and Mujae can only watch their tight-knit community begin to fade as the landscape of their lives is torn apart, building by building. Their growing connection with one another provides solace, but against an uncaring ruling class and the inevitability of the rising shadows, their relationship may not be enough.

사춘기 소녀의 이야기로 시작된 이야기는 고모할머니 이야기로 확장되고 할머니의 이야기는 우리나라의 현대사의 한 부분을 담고 있다. 공장에 하루 종일 갇혀 18시간 동안 미싱을 돌렸던 그때, 그런 일들이 잘못되었다고 소리도 내지 못했던 그때, 모여서 야학을 하고, 부당한 근무 환경을 개선하기 위한 모임을 만들었던 그때로 돌아간다.

박완서 소설 '한 말씀만 하소서' 해설집. 실로 우리는 이 글에서 절망과 고통에 들어찬 그녀의 말이 서서히 그 안에서 스스로 사랑과 생명의 싹을 피워내는 것을 본다. 그리고 이때 그녀의 글은 우리의 척박한 가슴에 던져진 하나의 작은 씨앗이 된다. 절망과 대면하는 법, 죽음과 대면하는 법, 신과 대면하는 법, 그녀는 자신의 고통스런 기록을 통해 이를 증언하고 있다. 그것은 상상력에 의해 만들어지거나 다듬어진 것이 아닌 날것으로서의 고통이며 증언이라는 점에서 더욱 큰 울림을 갖는다.

거북이를 찾지 못하면 밀드레드가 퇴학당할지도 모른다고? 말하는 동물 친구를 구출하기 위한 밀드레드의 폭풍우 속 모험 이야기. 3학년 여름방학 숙제로 작은 동물들과 대화할 수 있는 마법을 발명한 밀드레드는 기대에 차서 등굣길에 올랐어요. 밀드레드 스스로도 이번 숙제는 '꼴찌 마녀'라는 별명이 무색하게 완벽한 프로젝트이기 때문인데요. 밀드레드는 이 기회에 하드브룸 선생님과 친구들에게 자신의 진가를 보여주리라 다짐하며 빗자루를 타고 힘차게 학교로 향해요. 그래닛 선생님 소동이 있고, 캐클 마법학교에는 새로운 선생님이 왔어요.

The time is roughly now and Kai, a white-collar worker, has just been abandoned by his longtime lover. Follow him through a labyrinth of alleyways as he reels from this sudden departure. Accompany him up snowy mountains where he contemplates ending his own life. That mourning can be both an art and ever-unfolding journey is epitomized in the paths that Kai crosses and the lives he alters for better or worse.

Jungmin is down on her luck. She's worked tirelessly as a screenwriter her whole life, and has finally burnt out. But after months of isolation, she realises it's time to make a change, and ventures out into the streets near Seoul. When she stumbles upon a pottery workshop, a new world opens up to her. Leaning into the joys of her craft, Jungmin’s heart is slowly warmed by the kiln’s intense heat. Everyone at the workshop has their own story to tell, and as summer ebbs to autumn, autumn to winter, winter to spring, wounds begin to heal.

Jin and Suja meet and fall in love while studying at university in Pyongyang. She is a young journalist from a prominent family, while he is from a small village of little means. Outside the school, North Korea has fallen under great political upheaval, plunged into chaos and famine. When Jin returns home to find his family starving, their food rations all but gone, he makes a rash decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Jade isn't even my real name. Jade began as my Starbucks name, because all children of immigrants have a Starbucks name. Jade has done all the right things. She's curated herself to fit right in at her law firm, but tells herself she has no choice. She's with a man who loves her, but isn't always herself around him. She's made her Omma and Baba proud, but resents that they can't properly understand her. Jade is perfectly in control of her life. Until one terrible night unravels Jade's carefully constructed world, leaving her wondering who she truly is.

In the summer of 2002, 19-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be pinned. The case went cold.

『어린왕자』의 작가 생텍쥐페리의 자전적 소설인 『야간비행』은 작가의 항공 회사에서의 업무 경험을 토대로 한 행동주의 문학의 대표적인 작품이다. 문학적 가치와 사실적 가치를 보기 드물게 잘 결합시켰다는 이유로 앙드레 지드의 격찬을 받은 이 소설 속에는, 비행 중에 폭풍우를 만난 조종사가 자신의 임무에 충실하기 위해 최후의 순간까지 사투를 벌이는 모습이 생생하게 그려진다.

When a mother allows her thirty-something daughter to move into her apartment, she wants for her what many mothers might say they want for their child: a steady income, and, even better, a good husband with a good job with whom to start a family. But when Green turns up with her girlfriend, Lane, in tow, her mother is unprepared and unwilling to welcome Lane into her home. In fact, she can barely bring herself to be civil. Having centred her life on her husband and child, her daughter’s definition of family is not one she can accept.

19세기 위대한 프랑스 작가 플로베르 그리고 20세기 후반 세계 패션을 주도한 이브 생로랑의 문학과 예술적 만남을 한눈에 감상할 수 있는 『마담 보바리』 특별판이 플로베르 탄생 200주년을 맞아 새로운 번역 작업을 거쳐 출간되었다. 번역은 프랑스 파리 10대학에서 플로베르에 관한 연구로 박사 학위를 받은 방미경 역자가 맡았다.

박완서는 『아주 오래된 농담』의 주인공, 40대의 의사 심영빈의 시선을 통해 자본주의의 속내를 뒤집어 보고자 했다. 환자에게 병세를 알리지 않은 것이 돈과 결탁된 눈가림이었다는, 그것이 생명과 감정보다 돈을 우선시하는 현대인이 추종하는 자본주의의 실상임을 낱낱이 파헤친 작품이다.

SF 그랜드 마스터 아서 C. 클라크가 단독으로 집필한 마지막 작품 서기 2110년, 인류는 발달한 과학기술 덕분에 의식주에 대한 걱정은 물론 전쟁과 내분까지 해소하며 새로운 황금기에 접어든다.