BookDragon Blog

*STARRED REVIEW
Considered one of Korea’s greatest novelists, Pak Kyongni (1926-2008) is revered for her multi-volume epic Toji (The Land, 1969-1994), designated among the UNESCO Collection of Representative Works. She began publishing autobiographical short stories, inspired by tragic post-Korean War experiences, exposing the high cost of survival, especially for women.

Presenting works written between 1955 to 1968, this seven-story collection opens with her debut publication, “Calculations,” about a woman with unrealistic expectations for love (and life); it concludes with two later stories – “The Era of Fantasy,” a novella about a young girl’s challenging coming-of-age in colonized Korea, and “The Sickness No Medicine Can Fix,” about the detrimental effects of denying true love – both of which include plot details and characters that later appear in Toji.

Struggling women dominate and haunt: mistaken identity prevents a desperate widow from getting hired by a philandering, embezzling school principal; a single woman, saved at least from poverty, abandons love and chooses a fresh start abroad. Widowed mothers drive both “The Age of Darkness” and “The Age of Doubt,” in which powerless women lose young sons in preventable deaths.

A contextual “Commentary” by Korean university professor Kang Ji Hee – which appears only at book’s end – provides readers a rare opportunity of initial, unfiltered discovery. That eight translators are represented in this collection suggests unevenness, but access to this historically, sociologically, and literarily significant volume outstrips any missteps.

Translators: Sophie Bowman, Anton Hur, Slin Jung, You Jeong Kim, Paige Aniyah Morris, Mattho Mandersloot, Emily Yae Won, Dasom Yang

Review: modified from “Fiction,” Booklist, September 1, 2022

Readers: Adult

Published: 1955-1968 (Korea), 2022 (United States)