New Book
A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea’s most prominent young writers. In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In “A Song from Afar,” a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In “Secret,” the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother. In the tradition of Sally Rooney, Banana Yoshimoto, and Marilynne Robinson–writers from different cultures who all take an unvarnished look at human relationships and the female experience–Choi Eunyoung is a writer to watch.
About the Author:
Choi Eunyoung (b. 1984) has earned popular and critical acclaim for her poignant insights on human relationships and her portrayal of women, queers, victims of state violence, and other underrepresented voices. She made her literary debut in 2013 when her novella Shoko’s Smilewon the Writers’ World Award for New Writers and the Munhakdongne Young Writers Award the following year. She expanded the novella into a bestselling short story collection of the same name, which won the Heo Kyun Literary Award and Kim Jun-seong Literary Award and was chosen the best fiction title of 2016 by 50 Korean novelists. She also received the Munhakdongne Young Writers Award, Ku Sang Young Writers’ Award, and Lee Haejo Literary Award for her novella The Summer. Her latest work is a short story collection entitled Someone Harmless to Me(2018), which won the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award and was selected the best fiction title of 2018 by 50 Korean novelists. She has stated that “just as some people are born with weaker eyes or stomachs, some people have especially fragile minds. I want to humbly open my ears to the unfathomable pain of others.”
