Bae Suah Archives - BookDragon

Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Shelf Awareness]

05 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

If anyone can deeply understand a foreign text, the translator surely tops the list. "Like Bae's others, this book is simultaneously a detective novel and a surreal, poetic fever dream," explains Man Booker International Prize-winning translator Deborah Smith. Provocatively demanding, Untold Night and Day is Smith's...

Five More to Go: Sok-yong Hwang’s At Dusk [in The Booklist Reader]

17 Jul, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Lists, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

At Dusk by Sok-yong Hwang and translated by Sora Kim-Russell 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 Nobel Prize laureate Kenzaburō Ōe as “undoubtedly the most powerful voice...

North Station by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Library Journal]

20 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Short Stories, Translation

One word describes Bae Suah's latest: enigmatic. The seven stories that comprise her first translated-into-English collection (and her third collaboration with prolifically adroit British translator of choice Smith) are more fragments than linear narratives. In the opening "First Snow, First Sight," unreliable memory between two...

Ten Works of Contemporary Korean Literature in Translation [in The Booklist Reader]

27 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Lists, Repost, Translation

Despite Maureen Corrigan’s rather nasty NPR review of Korean author Kyung-sook Shin’s 2011 Stateside debut, Please Look After Mom – her phrase “cheap consolations of kimchee-scented Kleenex fiction” caused particular affront – Mom became a major bestseller. In a stroke of well-deserved vindication, Shin became the first woman...

Recitation by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Library Journal]

03 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Repost, Translation

*STARRED REVIEW For Kyung-hee, a self-described "theatre actor specializing in recitation," the "roving life" proves to be the only antidote to "everything [being] irresolvably vague and depressing." Traveling through Europe and Asia, she shares experiences and memories with new acquaintances and more intimate friends. Wandering without...

A Greater Music by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Library Journal]

04 Aug, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, European, Fiction, Repost, Translation

Out on a January walk in Berlin, the unnamed Korean narrator falls into a river. As she struggles to breathe, her experience gives way to both "conventional memories" of what has led her to this icy trap dovetailed with tenuous endeavors to comprehend and explicate...

Nowhere to Be Found by Bae Suah, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

22 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Korean, Translation

Korean narratives of disconnect and ennui arriving Stateside in recent translations seem to be on the verge of becoming an imported genre. Noteworthy titles over the past few years include Young-ha Kim's I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, Kyung Ran Jo's Tongue, and the forthcoming The Vegetarian by...

BookDragon Bae Suah Tag

Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Shelf Awareness]

Five More to Go: Sok-yong Hwang’s At Dusk [in The Booklist Reader]

North Station by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Library Journal]

Ten Works of Contemporary Korean Literature in Translation [in The Booklist Reader]

Recitation by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Library Journal]

A Greater Music by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith [in Library Journal]

Nowhere to Be Found by Bae Suah, translated by Sora Kim-Russell

Smithsonian Institution
Asian Pacific American Center

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