Love Korean Dramas? These Korean books in translation should be your next stop
If you have been binge-watching Korean dramas and films since Parasite’s Oscar win, followed Yoon Se-ri on her journey through Crash Landing on You, or obsessively discussed Ali’s choices in Squid Game with your friends, here’s a definitive list of contemporary Korean books in translation from the land of talented storytellers that should be on your 2022 reading list.
On the Origin of Species and Other Stories by Bo-Young
Translated from the Korean by Joungmin Lee Comfort and Sora Kim-Russell, Kaya Press, 2021
Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award, this collection of exceptional science-fiction short stories is a must-read for any speculative fiction reader, especially if you appreciate modern offerings like The Silent Sea and Okja. A beloved science-fiction author, Bo-Young Kim was also a consultant for Parasite director Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer. The collection mixes ancient myths, history, climate change, speculative ideas such as rapid evolution in a single lifetime, or a subverted account of a futuristic earth where robots enrolled in academia debate evolutionary strategies and discover “organic biology”. The collection also contains a refreshing essay by the author on the ‘science’ in science fiction. Unlike Western speculative fiction canon, Kim’s literary world carries a poignant look at the human and post-human themes which she connects to the immediate concerns in both the scientific and speculative fiction communities.
Also, by the author: I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories.
Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, Tilted Axis Press, 2021
Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur
This confessional-style, queer debut novel has a big heart, big ambition and a spunky candidness to it. Anton Hur, who has translated some of the best South Korean fiction in recent years, has a keen eye for expanding the non-Korean speaking readers’ understanding of Korean literature. Sang’s novel is a breath of fresh air and explores what it means to live and love as a 23-something in present-day Seoul. Hur also captures Sang’s humour brilliantly. From navigating career, family and mommy issues to caring for the elderly while trying to make something of himself in his twenties, the novel laments on several aspects of a young, gay Korean man’s quest for meaning and love. I, for one, can’t wait to see what Sang writes next. The novel has recently been longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022.
If you loved the K-Dramas Hello Dracula, Something in the Rain, Be Melodramatic or Because This is My First Life, this novel is for you.
Human Acts by Han Kang, Portobello Books, 2016
Translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith
Human Acts is a personal and political novel by the celebrated and award-winning Korean author Han Kang. Based on the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, during which student uprising turned violent in her hometown, the author takes us through the brutal massacres committed by the state against its own people. But the novel sharply differs from other books and films made on the event, in the sense that it doesn’t take readers through the historical events that precede the massacre. Instead, Kang begins at the aftermath—which, in no way, signals the end of the violence. The bodies lying in morgues and the survivors all bear testimony to this cruelty in individual chapters.
If the South Korean film, A Taxi Driver, or the K-Drama Youth of May made you curious about South Korean history and the Gwangju uprising, this novel is for you. Also by the author: The Vegetarian.
Violets by Kyung-Sook Shin, Feminist Press, 2022
Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur
Penned by the critically-acclaimed author of the bestseller Please Look After Mom, Violets is the story of a 22-year-old girl named San who lives a lonely life in Seoul and finds a job in a flower shop. The novel begins with an arresting account of her early life in the countryside with a mother who regrets her life choices, a grandmother who regrets having San’s mother as her daughter-in-law, San’s absentee father who left for greener pastures and her only friend Namae. A single moment of intimacy with Namae that ended in a violent rejection haunts the present-day San in 1990s Seoul as she becomes enamoured with a photographer, obsessively copies passages from her favourite book, and finds her footing in this flower shop. The novel is a formidable text on urban loneliness, suppressed queer desire and a haunting observation of the rapidly-changing country at the turn of the century. Originally written in 2001, this soon-to-be-released translation is a tragic yet moving work of fiction from Korea’s finest writers that should be on your spring-summer reading list.
Also, by the author: Please Look After Mom.
