Kirjahaku

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, and an exclusive interview with the author.

An oblique, hard-edged novel tinged with offbeat fantasy, One Hundred Shadows is set in a slum electronics market in central Seoul - an area earmarked for demolition in a city better known for its shiny skyscrapers and slick pop videos. Here, the awkward, tentative relationship between Eun-gyo and Mujae, who both dropped out of formal education to work as repair-shop assistants, is made yet more uncertain by their economic circumstances, while their matter-of-fact discussion of a strange recent development - the shadows of the slum's inhabitants have started to 'rise' - leaves the reader to make up their own mind as to the nature of this shape-shifting tale. Hwang's spare prose is illuminated by arresting images, quirky dialogue and moments of great lyricism, crafting a deeply affecting novel of perfectly calibrated emotional restraint. Known for her interest in social minorities, Hwang eschews the dreary realism usually employed for such issues, without her social criticism being any less keen. As well as an important contribution to contemporary working-class literature, One Hundred Shadows depicts the little-known underside of a society which can be viciously superficial, complicating the shiny, ultra-modern face which South Korea presents to the world.

What was it they were battling? Their smallness, of course, their smallness. A delicate and arresting queer novel from one of Korea's most celebrated contemporary writers 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.

Imagine Cormac McCarthy writing about the boring lives of clerks and you’ll anticipate something of the dystopic flavour of this gripping but socially bleak short story from Hwang. In a Korean world in which education has historically meant everything, the narrator realizes both that this is not true (through her partner in an essentially loveless affair) and that the recognition of this fact does not surprise her at all. The narrator is drawn into a larger story when she refuses to sell cigarettes to Jinju, a young woman in the company of two men who subsequently goes missing.

Con la demolici n de un antiguo centro comercial de electr nica, se abre la historia de Unguio y Muy ; j venes que experimentan el amor en una Corea del Sur globalizada, llena de soledad y abandono. Con historias detallistas y conversaciones filos ficas, Tantas sombras es una novela escrita en tono po tico, en donde se narra el desamparo y la violencia que tiene el progreso, y c mo prevalece la humanidad en el encuentro de estos personajes, quienes son acechados por sus sombras: "A paso lento camin bajo un sol plomizo. Una sombra oscura y corta estaba movi ndose a mi derecha, al comp s de mi cuerpo, como un huevo duro a medio hacer". " Qu es el amor? Es como fijarse en el aspecto del remolino de la amada para convertirla en un ser nico; aunque me guste la gente con clav culas rectas, al final le dices: Eso da igual. T me gustas. Esto es hacer que la singularidad de la amada sea absoluta e insustituible". Hyeongchul Shin, cr tico literario.