A Guardian Book of the Day A masterpiece of Korean history.
-- Maya Jaggi * The Guardian *
Undoubtedly the most powerful voice in Asia today.
-- Nobel Prizewinner Kenzaburo Oe
This nearly 500-page novel opens with a laid-off railroad worker in Seoul camped out on a platform atop a factory chimney, where he will stay for 410 consecutive days in protest. As he braves the elements, his ancestors, also railroad workers, visit to relive the murders, imprisonment, and torture they endured under Japanese and US occupation while fighting for better working conditions. The Nobel Prize in literature almost always goes to a European, but for the next one thats awarded to a non-European, Im rooting for Hwang Sok-yong, perhaps South Koreas most renowned author.
-- Leland Cheuk, book critic and author of the
No Good Very Bad AsianBittersweet and darkly comic richly rewarding read This is a novel that shines a light on what it means to be an industrial worker in Korea and to wrestle with the issues of worker exploitation, international tension, and a still-divided nation.
* Driftless Area Review *
[A]n absorbing look at an intriguing period of Korean history.
* Tony's Reading List *
Epic.
* Pile by the Bed *
Praise for Familiar Things:
A powerful examination of capitalism from one of South Koreas most acclaimed authors [Hwang] challenges us to look back and reevaluate the cost of modernisation, and see what and whom we have left behind.
* The Guardian *
Praise for Familiar Things:
Hwang Sok-yong is one of South Koreas foremost writers, a powerful voice for societys marginalised.
-- Deborah Smith, translator of
The VegetarianPraise for At Dusk:
Having been imprisoned for political reasons, Hwang has a restrained, delicate touch, alive to the nuances of memory, the slipperiness of the past, and the difficult choices life forces us to make ... Subtly political, deeply humane, a story about home, loss, and the cost of a countrys advancement.
--
Kirkus Reviews, starred review
Praise for Familiar Things:
As one of the countrys most prominent novelists, Hwang has never shied away from controversy With Familiar Things, Hwang turns his attention to the underside of South Koreas remarkable economic development, namely, the vast underclass it has created.
* Boston Review *
Praise for Familiar Things:
Sora Kim-Russells translation moves gracefully between gritty, whiffy realism and folk-tale spookiness.
* The Economist *
Praise for At Dusk:
Its a regretful, bittersweet exploration of modernisation, which picks away at the countrys past and present, slowly becoming a moving reflection of what we gain and lose as individuals and a society in the name of progress [Hwangs] writing is laced with the hard-won wisdom of a man with plenty left to say.
-- Ben East * The Observer *
