Janet Maslin’s interesting review of Shin Kyung-sook’s “Please Look After Mom” in the New York Times. The reviewer is a bit superior towards South Korea, jibing that “Please Look After Mom”, “Sold more than a million copies in South Korea, where there may not be a dry hankie left in the land,” but with some…
Bloomberg takes a look at “Your Republic is Calling You” and rather likes it. With its casual style (a triumph of translation by Chi- Young Kim) and its hectic plot, it would do fine as a beach book. Yet it’s something much deeper: an eye-opening depiction of the globalization of Eastern society. Apart from the…
A truly brilliant look, by K.M. Lawson, at the “treason of interpreters” from over at “Frog In A Well.”
Over at 9,999 Seas [to the] Left, there is an interesting brief review of Oh Jung-hee’s Wayfarer (ALAS a now-dead site). 9,999 says: I have a weak spot for mysteries that offer an answer and leave me puzzling over the question. The review was also interesting to me because it discussed issues of agency (which I…
A PDF of Division Lit (by Pak Jae-sup) that is interesting mainly if you know Hwang Soon-Won’s work.
Bruce Fulton discusses “yoryu chakka ” or women’s literature in Korea.
A very short review of “Style” a chick-lit book that is of interest because chick-lit in Korea is a direct outgrowth of the introduction of chick-lit from the west.
Not so much reviewed as righteously trampled (link here). Fortunately, the trampling is supported with passages from the book that reveal the reviewer to be spot on
Publishing Perspective takes a look at two recent books on North Korea and tries to answer the question. “What kind of literary life is there in North Korea? ”
Times Magazine likes Hwang Sun-won’s “Lost Souls,” a compilation of three early collections of stories Hwang wrote from the late 1930s through to the 1950s, now published for the first time in English.