Download or read book Synopses of Korean Novels written by Yunesŭkʻo Hanʾguk Wiwŏnhoe and published by [Seoul] : Korean National Commission for Unesco. This book was released on 1972 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Almond written by Won-pyung Sohn and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A BTS fan favorite! A WALL STREET JOURNAL STORIES THAT CAN TAKE YOU ANYWHERE PICK * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S STAY HOME AND READ PICK * SALON'S BEST AND BOLDEST * BUSTLE'S MOST ANTICIPATED The Emissary meets The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime in this poignant and triumphant story about how love, friendship, and persistence can change a life forever. This story is, in short, about a monster meeting another monster. One of the monsters is me. Yunjae was born with a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions like fear or anger. He does not have friends—the two almond-shaped neurons located deep in his brain have seen to that—but his devoted mother and grandmother provide him with a safe and content life. Their little home above his mother’s used bookstore is decorated with colorful Post-it notes that remind him when to smile, when to say "thank you," and when to laugh. Then on Christmas Eve—Yunjae’s sixteenth birthday—everything changes. A shocking act of random violence shatters his world, leaving him alone and on his own. Struggling to cope with his loss, Yunjae retreats into silent isolation, until troubled teenager Gon arrives at his school, and they develop a surprising bond. As Yunjae begins to open his life to new people—including a girl at school—something slowly changes inside him. And when Gon suddenly finds his life at risk, Yunjae will have the chance to step outside of every comfort zone he has created to perhaps become the hero he never thought he would be. Readers of Wonder by R.J. Palaccio and Ginny Moon by Benjamin Ludwig will appreciate this "resonant" story that "gives Yunjae the courage to claim an entirely different story." (Booklist, starred review) Translated from the Korean by Sandy Joosun Lee.
Download or read book Three Generations written by Yom Sang-Seop and published by Archipelago. This book was released on 2006-12-13 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Touted as one of Korea’s most important works of fiction, Three Generations (published in 1931 as a serial in Chosun Ilbo) charts the tensions in the Jo family in 1930s Japanese occupied Seoul. Yom’s keenly observant eye reveals family tensions withprofound insight. Delving deeply into each character’s history and beliefs, he illuminates the diverse pressures and impulses driving each. This Korean classic, often compared to Junichiro Tanizaki’s The Makioka Sisters, reveals the country’s situation under Japanese rule, the traditional Korean familial structure, and the battle between the modern and the traditional. The long-awaited publication of this masterpiece is a vital addition to Korean literature in English.
Download or read book Pachinko National Book Award Finalist written by Min Jin Lee and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-07 with total page 604 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and National Book Award finalist, Pachinko is an "extraordinary epic" of four generations of a poor Korean immigrant family as they fight to control their destiny in 20th-century Japan (San Francisco Chronicle). NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2017 * A USA TODAY TOP TEN OF 2017 * JULY PICK FOR THE PBS NEWSHOUR-NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CLUB NOW READ THIS * FINALIST FOR THE 2018DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE* WINNER OF THE MEDICI BOOK CLUB PRIZE Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2017, Washington Post NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * #1 BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER * USA TODAY BESTSELLER * WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER * WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER "There could only be a few winners, and a lot of losers. And yet we played on, because we had hope that we might be the lucky ones." In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant--and that her lover is married--she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations. Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters--strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis--survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history. *Includes reading group guide*
Download or read book When My Name Was Keoko written by Linda Sue Park and published by Univ. of Queensland Press. This book was released on 2013-04 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A heartwarming tale of courage, resilience and hope from master storyteller and winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal, Linda Sue Park. When her name was Keoko, Japan owned Korea, and Japanese soldiers ordered people around, telling them what they could do or say, even what sort of flowers they could grow. When her name was Keoko, World War II came to Korea, and her friends and relatives had to work and fight for Japan. When her name was Keoko, she never forgot her name was actually Kim Sun-hee. And no matter what she was called, she was Korean. Not Japanese. Inspired by true-life events, this amazing story reveals what happens when your culture, country and identity are threatened.
Download or read book I ll Be Right There written by Kyung-Sook Shin and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A love story between friends. It is so well written. [Kyung-sook Shin] has this use of language that is just beautiful and poetic. It’s a great book if you’re looking to escape.” —Chelsea Handler, #1 New York Times bestselling author How friendship, European literature, and a charismatic professor defy war, oppression, and the absurd Set in 1980s South Korea amid the tremors of political revolution, I’ll Be Right There follows Jung Yoon, a highly literate, twenty-something woman, as she recounts her tragic personal history as well as those of her three intimate college friends. When Yoon receives a distressing phone call from her ex-boyfriend after eight years of separation, memories of a tumultuous youth begin to resurface, forcing her to re-live the most intense period of her life. With profound intellectual and emotional insight, she revisits the death of her beloved mother, the strong bond with her now-dying former college professor, the excitement of her first love, and the friendships forged out of a shared sense of isolation and grief. Yoon’s formative experiences, which highlight both the fragility and force of personal connection in an era of absolute uncertainty, become immediately palpable. Shin makes the foreign and esoteric utterly familiar: her use of European literature as an interpreter of emotion and experience bridges any gaps between East and West. Love, friendship, and solitude are the same everywhere, as this book makes poignantly clear.
Download or read book Made in Korea written by Sarah Suk and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-05-24 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Two entrepreneurial Korean-American teens butt heads-and fall in love-while running competing Korean beauty businesses at their high school"--
Download or read book Lemon written by Kwon Yeo-sun and published by Other Press, LLC. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Book Review: Editor’s Choice Philadelphia Inquirer: Best Book of the Month World Literature Today: Notable Translation of the Year CrimeReads: Best International Crime Novel of the Year Ms. Magazine: Most Anticipated Book of the Year Washington Independent Review of Books: Favorite Book of the Year Parasite meets The Good Son in this piercing psychological portrait of three women haunted by a brutal, unsolved crime. In the summer of 2002, when Korea is abuzz over hosting the FIFA World Cup, eighteen-year-old Kim Hae-on is killed in what becomes known as the High School Beauty Murder. Two suspects quickly emerge: rich kid Shin Jeongjun, whose car Hae-on was last seen in, and delivery boy Han Manu, who witnessed her there just a few hours before her death. But when Jeongjun’s alibi checks out, and no evidence can be pinned on Manu, the case goes cold. Seventeen years pass without any resolution for those close to Hae-on, and the grief and uncertainty take a cruel toll on her younger sister, Da-on, in particular. Unable to move on with her life, Da-on tries in her own twisted way to recover some of what she’s lost, ultimately setting out to find the truth of what happened. Shifting between the perspectives of Da-on and two of Hae-on’s classmates struck in different ways by her otherworldly beauty, Lemon ostensibly takes the shape of a crime novel. But identifying the perpetrator is not the main objective here: Kwon Yeo-sun uses this well-worn form to craft a searing, timely exploration of privilege, jealousy, trauma, and how we live with the wrongs we have endured and inflicted in turn.
Download or read book One Left written by Kim Soom and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful tale of trauma and endurance that transformed a nation’s understanding of Korean comfort women During the Pacific War, more than 200,000 Korean girls were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers. They lived in horrific conditions in “comfort stations” across Japanese-occupied territories. Barely 10 percent survived to return to Korea, where they lived as social outcasts. Since then, self-declared comfort women have come forward only to have their testimonies and calls for compensation largely denied by the Japanese government. Kim Soom tells the story of a woman who was kidnapped at the age of thirteen while gathering snails for her starving family. The horrors of her life as a sex slave follow her back to Korea, where she lives in isolation gripped by the fear that her past will be discovered. Yet, when she learns that the last known comfort woman is dying, she decides to tell her there will still be “one left” after her passing, and embarks on a painful journey. One Left is a provocative, extensively researched novel constructed from the testimonies of dozens of comfort women. The first Korean novel devoted to this subject, it rekindled conversations about comfort women as well as the violent legacies of Japanese colonialism. This first-ever English translation recovers the overlooked and disavowed stories of Korea’s most marginalized women.
Download or read book Yi Kwang su and Modern Korean Literature Muj ng written by Ann Sung-hi Lee and published by Cornell East Asia Series. This book was released on 2005 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Yi Kwang-su (1892-1950) was one of the pioneers of modern Korean literature. When the serialization of Mujông (The Heartless) began in 1917, it was an immediate sensation, and it occupies a prominent place in the Korean literary canon. The Heartless is the story of a love triangle among three youths during the Japanese occupation. Yi Hyông-sik is a young man in his mid-twenties who is teaching English at a middle school in Seoul. Brilliant but also shy and indecisive, he is torn between two women. Kim Sôn-hyông is from a wealthy Christian family; she has just graduated from a modern, Western-style school and is planning on continuing her studies in the United States. Pak Yông-ch'ae is a musically gifted young woman who was raised in a traditional Confucian manner; due to family misfortune, she has become a kisaeng but remains devoted to Hyông-sik whom she knew as a child. The Heartless goes beyond the level of romantic melodrama and uses these characters to depict Korea's struggles with modern culture and national identity.A long critical introduction discusses Yi Kwang-su's life and work from his birth in 1892 to the publication of his first novel The Heartless in 1917. It contains in-depth analyses of the novel, Yi Kwang-su's literary theory, and early short stories.
Download or read book How I Became a North Korean written by Krys Lee and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-08-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lee takes us into urgent and emotional novelistic terrain: the desperate and tenuous realms defectors are forced to inhabit after escaping North Korea.” –Adam Johnson, author of The Orphan Master’s Son "The more confusing and horrible our world becomes, the more critical the role of fiction in communicating both the facts and the meaning of other people’s lives. Krys Lee joins writers like Anthony Marra, Khaled Hosseini and Elnathan John in this urgent work." –San Francisco Chronicle Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea's most prominent families. Jangmi, on the other hand, has had to fend for herself since childhood, most recently by smuggling goods across the border. Then there is Danny, a Chinese-American teenager whose quirks and precocious intelligence have long made him an outcast in his California high school. These three disparate lives converge when they flee their homes, finding themselves in a small Chinese town just across the river from North Korea. As they fight to survive in a place where danger seems to close in on all sides, in the form of government informants, husbands, thieves, abductors, and even missionaries, they come to form a kind of adoptive family. But will Yongju, Jangmi and Danny find their way to the better lives they risked everything for? Transporting the reader to one of the least-known and most threatening environments in the world, and exploring how humanity persists even in the most desperate circumstances, How I Became a North Korean is a brilliant and essential first novel by one of our most promising writers. A FINALIST FOR THE 2016 CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal One of The Millions' most anticipated books of the second half of 2016 One of Elle.com's "11 Best Books to Read in August" One of Bookpage's "Six Stellar Summer Debuts"
Download or read book The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness written by Kyung-Sook Shin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness is a stark and lyrical work that follows a teen-aged girl who has just arrived in Seoul to work in a factory while struggling to achieve her dream of finishing school and becoming a writer. Shin sets the this complex and nuanced coming of age story against the backdrop of Korea’s industrial sweatshops of the 1970's and takes on the extreme exploitation, oppression, and urbanization that helped catapult Korea’s economy out of the ashes of the war.Millions of teen-aged girls from the countryside descended on Seoul in the late 1970's. These girls formed the bottom of the city's social hierarchy, forgotten and ignored. Richly autobiographical, the novel lays bare the conflict and confusion Shin goes through as she confronts her past and the sweeping social change that has taken place in her homeland over the past half century. The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness has been cited in Korea as one of the most important literary novels of the decade, and cements Shin's legacy as one of the most insightful and exciting young writers of her generation.
Download or read book B Book and Me written by Sa-gwa Kim and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When outcasts b and Rang's friendship ends they are completely alone until a mysterious man, Book, introduces them to the part of town where lunatics live--the End."--
Download or read book Kim Jiyoung Born 1982 A Novel written by Cho Nam-Joo and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Editors Choice Selection A global sensation, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 “has become...a touchstone for a conversation around feminism and gender” (Sarah Shin, Guardian). One of the most notable novels of the year, hailed by both critics and K-pop stars alike, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 follows one woman’s psychic deterioration in the face of rampant misogyny. In a tidy apartment on the outskirts of Seoul, millennial “everywoman” Kim Jiyoung spends her days caring for her infant daughter. But strange symptoms appear: Jiyoung begins to impersonate the voices of other women, dead and alive. As she plunges deeper into this psychosis, her concerned husband sends her to a psychiatrist. Jiyoung narrates her story to this doctor—from her birth to parents who expected a son to elementary school teachers who policed girls’ outfits to male coworkers who installed hidden cameras in women’s restrooms. But can her psychiatrist cure her, or even discover what truly ails her? “A social treatise as well as a work of art” (Alexandra Alter, New York Times), Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 heralds the arrival of international powerhouse Cho Nam-Joo.
Download or read book The White Book written by Han Kang and published by Hogarth. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE “[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that . . . exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A “formally daring, emotionally devastating, and deeply political” (The New York Times Book Review) exploration of personal grief through the prism of the color white, from the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian “Stunningly beautiful writing . . . delicate and gorgeous . . . one of the smartest reflections on what it means to remember those we’ve lost.”—NPR While on a writer’s residency, a nameless narrator focuses on the color white to creatively channel her inner pain. Through lyrical, interconnected stories, she grapples with the tragedy that has haunted her family, attempting to make sense of her older sister’s death using the color white. From trying to imagine her mother’s first time producing breast milk to watching the snow fall and meditating on the impermanence of life, she weaves a poignant, heartfelt story of the omnipresence of grief and the ways we perceive the world around us. In captivating, starkly beautiful language, The White Book offers a multilayered exploration of color and its absence, of the tenacity and fragility of the human spirit, and of our attempts to graft new life from the ashes of destruction.
Download or read book Rebel Seoul written by Axie Oh and published by Tu Books. This book was released on 2023-01-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pacific Rim meets Korean action dramas in this mind-blowing sci-fi novel set in New Seoul in the year 2199.
Download or read book The Plotters written by Un-su Kim and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 BEST MYSTERY AND THRILLER BOOKS OF ALL TIME • A fantastical crime novel set in an alternate Seoul where assassination guilds compete for market dominance. "The Plotters’s first convenient comparison may be to the ever-expanding John Wick movies" --Los Angeles Review of Books Behind every assassination, there is an anonymous mastermind--a plotter--working in the shadows. Plotters quietly dictate the moves of the city's most dangerous criminals, but their existence is little more than legend. Just who are the plotters? And more important, what do they want? Reseng is an assassin. Raised by a cantankerous killer named Old Raccoon in the crime headquarters "The Library," Reseng never questioned anything: where to go, who to kill, or why his home was filled with books that no one ever read. But one day, Reseng steps out of line on a job, toppling a set of carefully calibrated plans. And when he uncovers an extraordinary scheme set into motion by an eccentric trio of young women--a convenience store clerk, her wheelchair-bound sister, and a cross-eyed librarian--Reseng will have to decide if he will remain a pawn or finally take control of the plot. Crackling with action and filled with unforgettable characters, The Plotters is a deeply entertaining thriller that soars with the soul, wit, and lyricism of real literary craft.
