17 Jun / At Dusk by Sok-yong Hwang, translated by Sora Kim-Russell [in Booklist]
*STARRED REVIEW
In just over a year, three Sok-yong Hwang titles – Familiar Things (2018), Princess Bari (2019), and this novel – have arrived Stateside, each indelibly, adroitly anglophoned by Seoul-based Sora Kim-Russell. Lauded by Nobelist Kenzaburō Ōe as “undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the novel in Asia today,” Hwang is considered Korea’s most renowned living author. Here he scrutinizes the quiet disconnect of contemporary relationships through the life of a successful, sixtysomething Seoul architect.
Park Minwoo escaped his slum childhood through education and opportunity, married well, and rose to be director of a well-regarded firm. In his twilight years, however, he lives alone, separated from his U.S.-domiciled wife and only child, his colleagues few, his friends aging and dying. Then a young woman approaches him at a lecture with a missive from someone he knew in childhood, someone he loved and lost. Communication proves inevitable, albeit only at a distance, sporadic but substantial, and yet “[t]he thing about memory is that two people can end up with the different versions of the same event.”
Interspersed with Minwoo’s story are interruptions from a theater-artist-by-day, convenience-worker-by-night whose identity and narrative function are intriguingly revealed. A piercing modern tale about all we can never know about our loved ones and ourselves.
Review: “Fiction,” Booklist, June 1, 2019
Readers: Adult
Published: 2018 (Korea, UK), 2019 (United States)