Korean Literary Fiction

Jade isn't even my real name. Jade began as my Starbucks name, because all children of immigrants have a Starbucks name. Jade has done all the right things. She's curated herself to fit right in at her law firm, but tells herself she has no choice. She's with a man who loves her, but isn't always herself around him. She's made her Omma and Baba proud, but resents that they can't properly understand her. Jade is perfectly in control of her life. Until one terrible night unravels Jade's carefully constructed world, leaving her wondering who she truly is.

They were the young ones, the bright ones, the ones with the dreams. From the Nazi-prowled wastes of North Africa to the bloody corridors of Europe, they honorably answered the call. War - it was their duty, their job, their life. They marched off as boys and they came back - those who made it - as soldiers and professionals forged in the heat of battle....

Kim Ronyoung (Gloria Hahn, 1926-1987) tells the story of Haesu and Chun, immigrants who fled Japanese-occupied Korea for Los Angeles in the decade prior to World War II, and their American-born children. First published in 1986, Clay Walls offers a portrait of what being Korean in California meant in the first half of the twentieth century and how these immigrants’ nationalist spirit helped them withstand racism and poverty.

In the summer of 2002, 19-year-old Kim Hae-on was murdered in what became known as the High School Beauty Murder. There were two suspects: Shin Jeongjun, who had a rock-solid alibi, and Han Manu, to whom no evidence could be pinned. The case went cold.

A woman meets her next-door neighbor and loans her a spatula, then starts suffering horrific gaps in her memory. A man, feeling jilted by an unrequited love, becomes obsessed with sorting through his neighbors' garbage in the belief that it will teach him how to better relate to people. A landlord decides to raise the rent, and his tenants hatch a plan to kill him at a team-building retreat. In 10 captivating, unnerving stories, Flowers of Mold presents a range of ordinary individuals who have found themselves left behind by an increasingly urbanized and fragmented world.

Can’t I Go Instead follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant in the early 20th-century. When the daughter’s suitor is arrested as a Korean Independence activist, and she is implicated during the investigation, she is quickly forced into marriage to one of her father’s Japanese employees and shipped off to the United States. At the same time, her maidservant is sent in her mistress’s place to be a comfort woman to the Japanese Imperial army. Years of hardship, survival and even happiness follow.

This is the story of a hen named Sprout. No longer content to lay eggs on command only to have them carted off to the market, she glimpses her future every morning through the barn doors, where the other animals roam free, and comes up with a plan to escape into the wild - and to hatch an egg of her own. An anthem for individuality and motherhood, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly has captivated millions of fans in Korea, where it is a contemporary classic. Now the novel is making its way around the world.

Jin and Suja meet and fall in love while studying at university in Pyongyang. She is a young journalist from a prominent family, while he is from a small village of little means. Outside the school, North Korea has fallen under great political upheaval, plunged into chaos and famine. When Jin returns home to find his family starving, their food rations all but gone, he makes a rash decision that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

This is the story of a salmon whose silver scales mark him out as different – who dares to leap beyond his fate. It's a story about growing up, and about aching and ardent love. For swimming upstream means pursuing something the salmon cannot see: a dream. Translated for the first time into English, The Salmon Who Dared To Leap Higher is a wise, tender and inspiring modern fable about finding freedom and a harmony with nature we have either forgotten or lost in the binding realities of life.

소설은 어느새 변온인간이 되어 있다는 걸 깨닫게 되는 '나(최인경)'의 시점에서 전개된다. 달라진 내가 겪고 마주하는 봄, 여름, 가을, 겨울, 사계절이 담겨 있다. 그리고 내 옆에는 직장 동료 송희진이 있다. 공기를 가르며 달리고, 푸르른 산길을 오르고, 밥을 나누어 먹고, 쉼 없이 메시지를 주고받으며 서로의 체온을 확인했던, 서로를 믿고 의지하고 도와주는 두 여성의 잔잔하고 단란한 연대가 소설에서 그려진다.

문학동네작가상과 자음과모음문학상을 수상하며 현대인의 불온한 삶과 부조리한 세계에 대한 예민하고 단단한 시선으로 남다른 작품 세계를 구축해온 작가 안보윤의 여섯 번째 장편소설 『밤의 행방』.

『오베라는 남자』의 작가 프레드릭 배크만의 신작 소설 『하루하루가 이별의 날』은 '롱 굿바이(Long goodbye)'라고도 부르는 알츠하이머병을 다룬 부드럽고도 마음 깊이 울리는 이야기다.

Seventeen-year-old Bucky Yi knows nothing about his birth country of South Korea or his bio-dad's disappearance; he can't even pronounce his Korean name correctly. Running through the woods of rural Washington State with a tire tied to his waist, his sights are set on one all-American goal: to become a college football player. So when a misadventure with his adoptive family leads the US government to deport him to South Korea, he's forced to navigate an entirely foreign version of his life.

1980년대부터 2000년대 초, 대한민국 순정만화 전성기를 한 권으로 추억할 수 있는 『안녕, 나의 순정』이 출간되었다. 신일숙, 황미나, 김혜린, 이빈, 한승원, 이은혜, 한혜연, 박희정, 강경옥, 유시진, 문흥미, 이미라, 나예리, 천계영, 박은아까지. 이름만 들어도 우리를 설레게 만드는 대표 작가 15인의 만화에 담긴 이영희 작가의 추억을 함께 따라가 보자.