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I Went To See My Father Kyung-Sook Shin

I Went To See My Father By Kyung-Sook Shin

I Went To See My Father by Kyung-Sook Shin


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I Went To See My Father Summary

I Went To See My Father: A Novel by Kyung-Sook Shin

An instant bestseller in Korea and the follow up to the international bestseller, Please Look After Mom; centering on a woman's efforts to reconnect with her aging father, uncovering long-held family secrets.

Two years after losing her daughter in a tragic accident, Hon finally returns to her home in the countryside to take care of her father. At first, her father only appears withdrawn and fragile, an aging man, awkward but kind around his own daughter. Then, after stumbling upon a chest of letters, Hon discovers the truth of her father's past and reconstructs her own family history.

Consumed with her own grief, Hon had been blind to her father's vulnerability and her family's fragility. Unraveling secret after secret and thanks to conversations with loving family and friends, Hon grows closer to her father, who proves to be more complex than she ever gave him credit for. After living through one of the most tumultuous times in Korean history, her father's life was once vibrant and ambitious, but spiraled during the postwar years. Now, after years of emotional isolation, Hon learns the whole truth, from her father's affair and involvement in a religious sect, to the dynamic lives of her own siblings, to her family's financial hardships.

What Hon uncovers about her father builds towards her understanding of the great scope of his sacrifice and heroism, and of his generation as a whole. More than just the portrait of a single man, I Went to See My Father opens a window onto humankind, family, loss, and war. With this long-awaited follow-up to Please Look After Mom-flawlessly rendered by award-winning translator Anton Hur-Kyung-Sook Shin has crafted an ambitious, global, epic, and lasting novel.

I Went To See My Father Reviews

[Comprising] quiet, tender exchanges between father and daughter . . . [I Went to See My Father] is a slow and deeply interior novel, dense with memories.
-Jung Yun, The Washington Post

Once more, Shin masterfully glides between quotidian details and astounding feats of survival revealed through multiple voices (older brothers, their mother, a wartime friend) and formats (letters, recordings, long chat messages) to create another universally empathic masterpiece.
-Terry Hong, Booklist (starred review)

Gentle yet piercing . . . [I Went to See My Father is a] sensitively crafted family portrait that's both specific and universal and, above all, humane.
-Kirkus Reviews

This is one you'll definitely want to put on your literary map.
-Erin Kodicek, Amazon Book Review

This is a book which reminds us that we all suffer from the same wounds, that no individual is free from the pains of their geography and that the greatest losses can only be healed where they all begin. Shin, once again, brings the unique history of a distant land into our homes and masterfully catches our hearts from the core, from the familiar bond of a child and a father.
-Defne Suman, author of The Silence of Scheherazade and At The Breakfast Table

A book that makes you hurt all over, and yet smile at the same time. A book where the experience being shared is so immediately palpable, so universal yet Korean, and beautiful and powerful at the same time.
-Kim Hyesoon, award-winning author of Autobiography of Death

Kyung-Sook Shin is the writer who made me into a writer. Reading her novel The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness made me discover a loneliness and unsettledness inside me that I didn't know existed, and thus comforted me on a sincere level. I Went to See My Father features the author's hallmark emotional richness combined with a precision of language that pierces the soul. I Went to See My Father shows us an entire generation that suffered through war, in the single character of a father, a modest cattle farmer. Just as Shin's Please Look After Mom gives a voice to the forgotten mother, this novel vividly shows the father as a figure whom we often overlook. Through a narrative so true as to be almost autobiographical, Shin guides us on a journey of heartache to literary catharsis.
-Sang Young Park, author of Love in the Big City

An insightful contemplation of memory and connectedness between family members. Shin threads together a lyrical family drama and the multilayered spectrum of Korean history in a compelling epic. It is not only a story of love and pain between father and daughter, but of how memories can heal tragic wounds and restore damaged relationships. A powerful, elegant, page-turner.
-J.M. Lee, author of Broken Summer

About Kyung-Sook Shin

Kyung-Sook Shin is one of South Korea's most widely read and acclaimed novelists. She has been awarded the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Dong-in Literary Award, the Man Asian Literary Prize, and many others. Shin is the author of 8 novels, 8 short story collections, and 3 essay collections, including the NYT-bestselling Please Look After Mom, which has been published in more than forty countries.
TRANSLATOR BIO: Anton Hur was double-longlisted and shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and has worked on several of Kyung-Sook Shin's books. He lives in Seoul.

Table of Contents

Contents

Chapter 1: It's Been a Long Time Since I've Seen You
Chapter 2: When You Walk into the Night
Chapter 3: Inside the Wooden Chest
Chapter 4: Talking about Him
Chapter 5: On the Verge of Goodbye

Glossary

Additional information

CIN1662601379VG
9781662601378
1662601379
I Went To See My Father: A Novel by Kyung-Sook Shin
Used - Very Good
Hardback
Astra Publishing House
20230411
304
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - I Went To See My Father