Hwang Jungeun / 황정은 / 2018 / -

"That's how it generally is with Aeja's stories. They're as potent as a putrid peach. Listening to her words your head starts to droop with their sticky juice trickling down your ears, until all you can do is succumb to the saccharine flow." From one of South Korea's most acclaimed young authors comes the story of two sisters, Sora and Nana. When Sora was ten years old, and Nana was nine, their father died in a freak accident at the factory where he worked, his body sucked under a huge cogwheel, crushed beyond recognition. Their mother Aeja, numb with grief, gives in to torpor, developing an unhealthy obsession with the paradoxical violence implicit in life. Now adults, Sora finds herself dreaming of the past when she discovers that Nana is pregnant. Her initial reaction is shock – though they live together, she never even realised her younger sister had a lover – and Nana's icy response to her attempt at being considerate ('You hate this, so don't pretend like I'm some poor pregnant woman you have to pity') drives a wedge between the two. Can Naghi – the boy who shared their childhood, and the simple, nourishing meals cooked by his mother – help the sisters break free of Aeja's worldview in which life is ultimately futile and love is always doomed? A delicate stylist with an unflinching social gaze, in I'll Go On Hwang Jungeun has crafted a poignant novel with an uncanny ear for the unspoken secrets and heartaches buried beneath daily life and family ritual. Above all, it is a stunning exploration of the intensity of early bonds – and the traces they leave on us as we grow up. Praise for I'll Go On 'I'll Go On tenderly and poetically examines the bonds of sisterhood and family – the one we're born with and the one we choose – exploring both the damage love can do and it's capacity for healing. It's at once sad and hopeful, quiet and yet full to the brim of an intense and beautiful energy.' — Sophie Mackintosh 'Sora, Nana and Naghi are such brutally tender characters. Though their voices are unique, their story is universal. There is truth on every page of this heart-shattering book.' — Preti Taneja 'Enthralling and poetic, with sentences that thrum full of melancholy and an understated intelligence that isn't afraid to ask the vital questions of who and why we are.' — Sharlene Teo 'A witty, gentle, yet startling novel, in a sensitive and elegant translation – a gem.' — Helen Mort Source : https://lti.overdrive.com/media/CF3F4A9E-DD22-438B-A054-CF1C0775022C

Hwang Jungeun / 황정은 / 2022 / -

Con la demolición de un antiguo centro comercial de electrónica, se abre la historia de Unguio y Muyé; jóvenes que experimentan el amor en una Corea del Sur globalizada, llena de soledad y abandono. Con historias detallistas y conversaciones filosóficas, Tantas sombras es una novela escrita en tono poético, en donde se narra el desamparo y la violencia que tiene el progreso, y cómo prevalece la humanidad en el encuentro de estos personajes, quienes son acechados por sus sombras: "A paso lento caminé bajo un sol plomizo. Una sombra oscura y corta estaba moviéndose a mi derecha, al compás de mi cuerpo, como un huevo duro a medio hacer". "¿Qué es el amor? Es como fijarse en el aspecto del remolino de la amada para convertirla en un ser único; aunque me guste la gente con clavículas rectas, al final le dices: «Eso da igual. Tú me gustas». Esto es hacer que la singularidad de la amada sea absoluta e insustituible". Hyeongchul Shin, crítico literario. source: https://lti.overdrive.com/media/9316532?cid=37224

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

Hwang Jungeun / 황정은 / 2024 / -

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER! "There is an unforgettable, curious beauty to be found here." —Han Kang, Winner of the Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian Han Kang's Human Acts meets Yōko Ogawa's The Memory Police in this understated South Korean novella in translation: a restrained yet emotional magical realist examination of futility in a capitalist society written in response to the 2009 Yongsan Disaster. 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. As the landscape of their lives is torn apart, building by building, electronics-repair-shop employees Eungyo and Mujae can only watch as their community begins to fade. 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. Winner of the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award and the Korean Bookseller's Award, One Hundred Shadows is a tender working-class perspective with subtle and affecting social commentary. This edition features an introduction by Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Vegetarian, Han Kang, a historical note about the Yongsan tragedy that inspired One Hundred Shadows, and an exclusive interview with the author. source: https://lti.overdrive.com/media/10251231?cid=37224

Hwang Jungeun et al / 황정은 / 2024 / -

Three women—the old mother and her two daughters—contemplate their family life and their bottled-up feelings through the novel's placating yet oddly unnerving prose. Every Year is divided into four large chapters; the first unravels from the perspective of Sejin, younger daughter, the second from that of Youngjin, older daughter, the third from the mother's, and the fourth, back to Sejin's. Throughout the course of the novel, a number of themes are developed, including its discussion of interracial marriage, different forms of family, and sexual minorities. Circumstances and history forced the mother to the life of obedience, familial obligations and financial hardship forced Youngjin to give up her dream and support the family, and the reality of her culture forced Sejin to be in the closet. And all the while, these three women, while empathizing with each other, seem entrapped in the cycle of forcing each other to further succumb. source: https://lti.overdrive.com/media/10267489?cid=37224

HWANG JUNGEUN / 황정은 / 2024 / -

What was it they were battling? Their smallness, of course, their smallness. d, a nonbinary gig worker living in Seoul, briefly escapes the grasp of isolation when they meet dd, only to be ensnared by grief when dd dies in a car accident. Meanwhile, the world around them reckons with the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster that left more than 300 dead. As formally inventive as it is evocative, dd's Umbrella is composed of twin novellas. The first is told from the perspective of d, and the second from the perspective of a writer researching a book they may never write. Both figures dwell in society's margins––queer, working-class, and part of nontraditional family structures. As people across Korea come together to protest the government's handling of the Sewol ferry disaster, and to impeach the right-wing president in office, the novel examines how progressive movements coexist with social exclusion, particularly of women and sexual minorities, invisibilised in service of the 'greater cause'. dd's Umbrella is a meditative and off-centre novel about mourning and revolution. Source: https://lti.overdrive.com/media/10575463?cid=37224