Bruce Fulton

To represent the past century of Korean fiction, this definitive collection extends beyond familiar writers, challenges cultural norms, and crosses political borders. By inlcuding stories from neglected female, North Korean, and wolbuk writers (those who migrated to the North after 1945 and whose works were widely banned in South Korea) and by bringing politically engaged works together with experimental ones, this anthology articulates the ruptures and resolutions that have makred the peninsula. From sketches of desperate peasants in straitened circumstances to fast-moving, visceral tales of contemporary South Korea, the works in this collection bear witness to the dramatic transformations and events in twentieth-century Korean history, including Japanese colonial rule, civil war, and economic modernization in the South. The writers explore these developments through a variety of literary and political lenses, revealing wtih precision and poignancy their impact on Korean society and the lives of ordinary Koreans. This anthology includes an introduction, which synthesizes the key developments in modern Korean literature, and a comprehensive bibliography of Korean fiction in translation.

An Anthology

Modern Korean Fiction

This eclectic, moving and wonderfully enjoyable collection is the essential introduction to Korean literature. Journeying through Korea's dramatic twentieth century, from the Japanese occupation and colonial era to the devastating war between north and south and the rapid, disorienting urbanization of later decades, The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories captures a hundred years of Korea's vibrant short-story tradition. Here are peddlars and prostitutes travelling across snow-laden fields; artists drinking and debating in the tea-houses of 1920s Seoul; soldiers fighting for survival; exiles from the war who can never go home again; and lonely men and women searching for connection in the dizzying modern city. The collection features stories by some of Korea's greatest writers, including Yi Sang, Hwang Sogyong,Yi Munyol and Pak Wanso, as well many brilliant contemporary voices, such as Han Kang and Kim Yongha. Curated by Bruce Fulton, this is a volume that will surprise, unsettle and delight.

The Penguin Book of Korean Short Stories

Kevin O'Rourke

Ju-Chan Fulton

Manshik Ch`ae

A Ch'ae Manshik Reader

Sunset

The Red Room

Sŏk-kyŏng Kang

Chi-wŏn Kim

Chng-hi O

The universal topics of life, death, love, hate, sex, loss of innocence, and other themes, are explored in fiction by 3 Korean writers

Stories by Korean Women Writers

Words of Farewell

Sun-wŏn Hwang

These captivating short stories portray three major periods in modern Korean history: the forces of colonial modernity during the late 1930s; the postcolonial struggle to rebuild society after four decades of oppression, emasculation, and cultural exile (1945 to 1950); and the attempt to reconstruct a shattered land and a traumatized nation after the Korean War. Lost Souls echoes the exceptional work of China's Shen Congwen and Japan's Kawabata Yasunari. Modernist narratives set in the metropolises of Tokyo and Pyongyang alternate with starkly realistic portraits of rural life. Surrealist tales suggest the unsettling sensation of colonial domination, while stories of the outcast embody the thrill and terror of independence and survival in a land dominated by tradition and devastated by war. Written during the chaos of 1945, "Booze" recounts a fight between Koreans for control of a former Japanese-owned distillery. "Toad" relates the suffering created by hundreds of thousands of returning refugees, and stories from the 1950s confront the catastrophes of the Korean War and the problematic desire for autonomy. Visceral and versatile, Lost Souls is a classic work on the possibilities of transition that showcases the innovation and craftsmanship of a consummate?and widely celebrated?storyteller.

Stories

Lost Souls

Marshall R. Pihl

Since its original publication in 1993, this powerful collection has served as a vivid gateway to the history, society, and culture of contemporary South Korea, reflecting the poignant motif of exile in Korea's experience of modernity. This new edition has been expanded to include four new stories--Scarlet Fingernails (1987) by Kim Minsuk; The Last of Hanak'o (1992) by Ch'oe Yun, one of Korea's most important living writers; Conviction (2003) by Ch'oe Such'ol; and From Powder to Powder (2004) by Kim Hun--adding two important women's voices and extending the anthology's range into the new millennium. None of the stories in this expanded edition remains in print in any other volume, and Conviction and From Powder to Powder appear here in English for the first time.

Land of Exile

"Since its original publication, Land of Exile has become the standard English-language anthology of post-1945 Korean short fiction. This new edition renews and enriches the first. The selections have been expanded to include four new stories." "In addition, Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton have revised the introduction, updated the headnotes, repolished translations, and appended a list of further readings. What has not changed is what the anthology offers readers: a vivid gateway to the history, society, and culture of contemporary South Korea and unforgettable stories, with the motif of exile in Korea's experience of modernity."--BOOK JACKET.

Contemporary Korean Fiction

A Study in the Management of Republican Power, by Bruce Fulton

The Political Ascent of Ernest Constans

Eight stories by Korean writers. In The Last of Hanak O, the male narrator muses on why he is both drawn to and frightened by a college girlfriend, in Almaden, a Korean immigrant to New York tries to understand her obsession with a customer to her liquor store, and Scarlet Fingernails is on a family's reaction to a Communist defector.

New Fiction by Korean Women

Wayfarer

The short story has been the genre of choice for writers of literary fiction in modern Korea and it continues to thrive in the new millennium. Waxen Wings: The Acta Koreana Anthology of Short Fiction from Korea offers a diverse sampling from a century of modern Korean short fiction, beginning with stories from two early masters (Yi Hyos k and Ch'ae Manshik) and ending with works by four of the most imaginative contemporary writers (Kim Y ngha, Ha S ngnan, P'y n Hyey ng, and Kim Chunghy k). In between are the two writers who are primarily responsible for the visibility enjoyed by Korean women fiction writers today (O Ch ngh i and Pak Wans ), and a writer, Kim W nil, who has made it his lifework to address the territorial and spiritual division of the Korean peninsula. The title of the anthology, from Ha S ngnan's 1999 story, suggests the transcendental qualities of the finest Korean short fiction.

The Acta Koreana Anthology of Short Fiction from Korea

Waxen Wings

Kwon Youngmin

An anthology of contemporary Korean fiction including: "The Wife and Children"; "The Post Horse Curse"; "Mountains"; "Kapitan Ri"; "The Winter"; and "A Dream of Good Fortune".

Bruce Fulton

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