For nearly a century, the Deep Ones have remained a staple of H.P. Lovecraft’s mythology, often serving as unsettling supporting figures in tales of cosmic horror. Atlas of Deep Ones (available here on Amazon) transforms this dynamic by placing these amphibious beings at the forefront of an expansive anthology dedicated to their history and culture.…
Thanks to all who came out… The PPT describing the history of Korean literature is attached… YonseismallupateGood1
For those of you who don’t know, most of my writing has migrated to the Los Angeles Review of Books Korea Blog and Seoul Magazine. Recently Seoul Magazine published my review of Cho Chongnae’s (Jo Jung-rae) “The Human Jungle” in the mighty Seoul Magazine: For some reason they chose to use a graphic of the…
Kwon Sun-chan and Nice People is by Lee Ki-ho who has also had At Least We Can Apologize and So Far, and Yet So Near translated into English. It is a very short story of two men and a problem. The narrator is a professor living away from Seoul and his family. He lives in…
It’s my bi-weekly piece in the Los Angeles Review of Books Korea Blog. This week the article is BRIGHT LIES, BIG CITY: KOREAN AUTHORS AND SEOUL. Below you will find additional information on the books/stories I mentioned on the LARB Blog .Here’s an excerpt and below that the information on all the works mentioned in the…
Not exactly earth-shaking. But when I ordered Modern Short Stories from Korea from “Pursuit of Happiness” Books in “Good” shape I did not expect a partially torn off cover and disconnected spine. But as the only other copy cost $125.00 on Amazon(!) I decided to go online and figure out how to fix…
Oh my, … in my last review of Modern Short Stories From Korea the first book of translated Korean modern literature in English I noted that it was naturalistic, non-didactic, and even occasionally funny. So next I picked up Collected Short Stories from Korea (Technically “Volume 1” but so far as I know the only…
Three Voices at Midnight by Shing Sang-ung (Translated by Ahn Juhg-hyo) is an interesting amalgamation of internal stories. It is the story of a three-way love affair (not at all physical) between three men. It is also that relatively rare thing in Korean fiction as story about the Civil War as an actual battle. It…
Last week in a “stop the presses” moment for Korean literature, Han Kang won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize for her harrowing and brilliant The Vegetarian. Mention should also be made of her excellent translator Deborah Smith who wrote brilliantly literary prose. Han Kang’s achievement immediately became the biggest ‘win’ in Korean translated literature,…
Korean Fiction Chapters: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4/ 5 / In 1877 King Gojong and Queen Min sent a group of Koreans to Japan to examine its technological and social changes. What they found amazed them, as while Korea had once considered itself the modern hub of Asia, Japan had modernized far beyond Korean expectations or experience. While Queen…
In The Future of Silence (Great and reviewed at this link), Korean author Kim Sagwa is presented in English for the second time, the first time in an easily accessible format. I reached out to Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton for more information on Kim, and this is what they responded, which aligns with what I…
As part of popularising Korean Modern Fiction, KTLit is still occasionally publishing Wikipedia Pages. Inspired by the book The Future of Silence Fiction by Korean Women, we have added the page for Kim Sagwa. Please feel free to edit it if you have anything to add.. It looks like this: Kim Sagwa From Wikipedia, the…
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,…
I guess it broadcast today in the US on NPR’s “On the Media” amongst a discussion of the rebirth of the book, comic books, Amazon going bricks and mortar and book thieves. The snippet on Korean lit: https://ktlit.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/NPRKorea-31316-3.51-PM.mp3
A bit tardy on this perhaps, but the good folks at LTI Korea have published their March edition online and it is full of fun reading for fans of Korean, or any, literature. The Feature Story is on Korean author Hwang Sok-yong, titled An Evolving Realist, Dreaming of the Unity of Life and Literature. There is a…
