Fabulous Fiction Firsts #307: Spotlight on Korea

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 5:18pm by muffy

Please Look After Mom a novel by Kyung-sook S(h)in (translated from the Korean by Chi-Young Kim) is the stunning, deeply moving story of a family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the crowds of the Seoul Station subway.
Currently a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York City and one of South Korea’s most widely read and acclaimed novelists, Sin has been honored with many literary prizes including France’s Prix de l’Inaperçu. Please Look After Mom is her first book to appear in English.

Chosen as one of the 9 Kirkus Reviews' New and Notable Fiction Debuts for 2011, Chicago author Samuel Park's This Burns My Heart is narrated by Soo-Ja, a woman struggling to provide a good life for her daughter in spite of her own unhappy marriage and a culture that grants no rights to women, the situation made even more difficult when her long-lost true love Dr. Yul returns.

Considered by critics and reviewers to be his break-out work, The Orphan Master's Son * * * by Adam Johnson (Stanford, Creative Writing) is not to be missed. I am sure some of you would not hesitate to point out that this is NOT his first novel. But how many of you had read Parasites Like Us (2003)? I thought so.

Pak Jun Do's father runs Long Tomorrows, a North Korean work camp for orphans where he is given his first taste of power. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, he rises through the ranks to become a valuable instrument of the state as a professional kidnapper. To stay alive, he must navigate and endure the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands from those in command, until he boldly takes on a treacherous role in order to save the woman he loves.

"Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master's Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love."

Adam Johnson will be in Ann Arbor Tuesday, January 24th, 7pm at Nicola's Books. Get there early.

* * * = Starred Reviews