E-Books & Audiobooks

We provide e-books of Korean literary works published in over 48 languages around the world.

10 results
  • Peace Under Heaven
    English(English) Ebook

    Ch`ae Man-Sik et al / 채만식 / 2012 / KDC구분 > literature > Korean Literature > Korean Fiction > 20th century

    This is the first English translation of a much beloved satirical novel. Source : https://lti.overdrive.com/media/0DBF7A97-09C7-4268-A464-BDFDCC6E77A2

  • Frozen Fish
    English(English) Ebook

    Ch`ae Man-Sik / 채만식 / 2013 / -

    Ch'ae Man-Sik is considered to be one of the most emblematic novelists of the Japanese colonial period in Korea. He produced works that authentically showcased the social realities and conflicts of the time. The title Frozen Fish depicts Joseon intellectuals that were unable to live autonomous lives due to Japanese oppression during the 1940s when the Japanese Empire’s nationalist, fascist system kicked into full swing. In the story, protagonist Moon Dae-yeong meets a Japanese woman, Sumiko, by chance. His fondness for her develops into a love affair, and in the end, they go their separate ways, with Dae-yeong returning home to his wife.

  • Transgressor of the Nation
    English(English) Ebook

    Ch`ae Man-Sik / 채만식 / 2014 / KDC구분 > literature > Korean Literature > Korean Fiction > 20th century > 1910-1945

    Ch'ae Man-Sik is considered to be one of the most emblematic novelists of the Japanese colonial period in Korea. He produced works that authentically showcased the social realities and conflicts of the time. Transgressor of the Nation is a novella that was serialized in the magazine, Baik Min, from 1948 to 1949. This is the author’s self-reflection on his involvement in pro-Japanese activities, and at the same time, an apologia against the wholesale punishment of people who collaborated with the Japanese without specific consideration that pertained to each complex case.

  • The Cuckoo
    English(English) Ebook

    Ch`ae Man-Sik / 채만식 / 2014 / KDC구분 > literature > Korean Literature > Korean Fiction > 20th century > 1910-1945

    Ch’ae Man-Sik (1902 – 1950) was born in Okgu, North Jeolla Province in 1902. His pen names are Baek-reung and Chae-ong. He produced works that authentically showcased the social realities and conflicts of the time such as “My Innocent Uncle” (1938), Turbid Waters (1937-1938), Peace Under Heaven (1938), Frozen Fish (1940), and the play The Legend of the Mantis (1940), among others. His artistic world puts emphasis on reflecting and criticizing the reality of his day.  

  • Three Paths
    English(English) Ebook

    Ch`ae Man-Sik / 채만식 / 2014 / KDC구분 > literature > Korean Literature > Korean Fiction > 20th century > 1910-1945

    Ch’ae Man-Sik (1902 – 1950) was born in Okgu, North Jeolla Province in 1902. His pen names are Baek-reung and Chae-ong. He produced works that authentically showcased the social realities and conflicts of the time such as “My Innocent Uncle” (1938), Turbid Waters (1937-1938), Peace Under Heaven (1938), Frozen Fish (1940), and the play The Legend of the Mantis (1940), among others. His artistic world puts emphasis on reflecting and criticizing the reality of his day.  

  • Peace Under Heaven
    English(English) Ebook

    Ch`ae Man-Sik et al / 채만식 / 2015 / KDC구분 > literature > Korean Literature > Korean Fiction > 20th century

    Originally published in Seoul in 1938, soon after the outbreak of the Pacific War, "Peace Under Heaven" is a satirical novel centering on the household of a Korean landlord during the Japanese colonial occupation. Master Yun, embodying the traditional ambitions of a standard Korean paterfamilias, by being projected fast forward into a modern urban environment, caricatures the increasing irrelevance of Confucian mores to 20th-century social reality. Depicting the anomic lives of the Yun household in colonial Seoul, Chase Man-Sik, one of modern Korea's best-known writers, uses black comedy to underscore the collapse of ritualistic traditional values in the face of capitalist modernisation. The decadence of the nouveau riche pseudo-aristocrat Master Yun is interwoven with insights into the customary bases of oppression of Korean women into the self-deceptions underlying collaboration by Koreans with the Japanese oppressor. The savage hilarity of Chae's style lends force and historical relevance to his insight into the attitudes of the milieu in which his narrative is set. URL: https://lti.overdrive.com/media/4115519?cid=37224

  • Sunset
    English(English) Ebook

    Ch`ae Man-Sik et al / 채만식 / 2017 / -

    Ch'ae Manshik is one of the most accomplished modern Korean writers yet is underrepresented in English translation because of the challenges posed by his distinctive voice and colloquial style. Sunset: A Ch'ae Manshik Reader is the first English-language anthology of his works and features a variety of genres—novella, short fiction, anecdotal essay, travel writing, children's story, one-act play, three-act play, and roundtable discussion. This anthology moves beyond the usual "representative works" to provide a well-rounded selection of writing by one of Korea's most innovative and memorable voices, drawing on Ch'ae's ten-volume Complete Works. This edition also provides a comprehensive introduction outlining the limitations of existing approaches to Ch'ae. It contextualizes the anthology's contents both in terms of the author's career and the rich Korean tradition of intertextuality and intermediality that he reflects from the country's earliest times to the new millennium. Source : https://lti.overdrive.com/media/3294510?cid=37224

  • A Ready-Made Life
    English(English) Ebook

    Ch`ae Man-Sik et al / 채만식 et al / 1998 / -

    A Ready Made Life is the first volume of early modern Korean fiction to appear in English in the U.S. Written between 1921 and 1943, the sixteen stories are an excellent introduction to the riches of modern Korean fiction. They reveal a variety of settings, voices, styles, and thematic concerns, and the best of them, masterpieces written mainly in the mid-1930s, display an impressive artistic maturity. Included among these authors are Hwang Sun-won, modern Korea's greatest short story writer; Kim Tong-in, regarded by many as the author who best captures the essence of the Korean identity; Ch'ae Man-shik, a master of irony; Yi Sang, a prominent modernist; Kim Yu-jong, whose stories are marked by a unique blend of earthy humor and compassion; Yi Kwang-su and Kim Tong-ni, modernizers of the language of twentieth-century Korean fiction; and Yi Ki-yúng, Yi T'ae-jun, and Pak T'ae-won, three writers who migrated to North Korea shortly after Liberation in 1945 and whose works were subsequently banned in South Korea until democratization in the late 1980s. One way of reading the stories, all of which were written during the Japanese occupation, is that beneath their often oppressive and gloomy surface lies an anticolonial subtext. They can also be read as a collective record of a people whose life choices were severely restricted, not just by colonization, but by education (either too little or too much, as the title story shows) and by a highly structured society that had little tolerance for those who overstepped its boundaries. Life was unremittingly onerous for many Koreans during this period, whatever their social background. In the stories, educated city folk fare little better than farmers and laborers. A Ready-Made Life will provide scholars and students with crucial access to the literature of Korea's colonial period. A generous opening essay discusses the collection in the context of modern Korean literary history, and short introductions precede each story. Here is a richly diverse testament to a modern literature that is poised to assume a long overdue place in world literature. Source: https://lti.overdrive.com/media/4004892?cid=37224

  • The Rainy Spell and Other Korean Stories
    English(English) Ebook

    Yi Kwang-Su et al / 이광수 et al / 2015 / KDC구분 > literature > Korean Literature > Complete Collection > Library > Complete Collection & Library (more than 2 writers)

    This anthology of short stories reflects the writers' shared core experience of Korea's trajectory from an inward-looking feudal state, through Japanese colony and battle-ground for the Korean War, to a modernizing society. Three stories have been added to the original edition. Source: https://lti.overdrive.com/media/4123934?cid=37224

  • The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories
    English(English) Ebook

    Lee Hyoseok et al / 이효석 et al / 2023 / -

    This eclectic, moving and richly enjoyable collection is the essential introduction to Korean literature. Journeying through Korea's dramatic recent past, from the Japanese occupation and colonial era to the devastating war between north and south and the rapid, disorienting urbanization of later decades, The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories captures a hundred years of vivid storytelling. Here are peddlers and donkeys travelling across moonlit fields; artists drinking and debating in the tea-houses of 1920s Seoul; soldiers fighting for survival; exiles from the war who can never go home again; and lonely men and women searching for connection in the dizzying modern city. The collection features stories by some of Korea's greatest writers, including Pak Wanso, O Chonghui and Cho Chongnae, as well as many brilliant contemporary voices, such as P'yon Hyeyong, Han Yujoo and Kim Aeran. Curated by Bruce Fulton, this is a volume that will surprise, unsettle and delight. source: https://lti.overdrive.com/media/9768586?cid=37224