About the Author
Born in 1980, Tablo(Daniel A. Lee) was raised in Korea, Indonesia, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. As a teenager, he revived the once extinct school literary magazine Kaleidoscope, serving as its editor-in-chief.
He studied in Stanford University´s creative writing and literature programs, receiving a Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees with top honors and a literary award for short fiction. During his “crazy years” in America, he once set up residence in East Harlem, working as an assistant director of documentary films in New York. Tablo is now the front-man for Epik High, the premier hip-hop group in Korea. He also hosted a radio show “Dream Radio with Tablo”, MBC.

- 350,000 copies sold in Korea within 6 months
- 2007 Aladdin Book of the Year

A Love Story between the first French diplomat stationed in Korea and a royal court dancer.

This is the story of Lee Jin, the first royal court dancer from Korea who went to Paris, in
the late 19th century, around the time of introduction of Western civilizations into Joseon (Korea). Lee Jin, orphaned young and raised by her neighbor, Mrs. Seo, enters palace as a child attendant. One day, having lost her way in the palace, she catches the attention of the Empress, and under the shower of her affection, grows up to be a royal court dancer, and an attendant taking care of the Empress at her side.

A first-generation French diplomat called Collin de Plancy comes to the court for an
audience with the king, and upon seeing the captivating beauty of Lee Jin, falls in love
with her at first sight; upon a second encounter with Lee Jin at the royal banquet, as she dances the spring-parrot-dance in a traditional dancer’s outfit, he becomes even more captivated by her beauty. Though well aware that women of the palace belong to the king, Collin confesses to the king his love for Lee Jin after some turmoil, and eventually gaining permission from the king, Lee Jin leaves for France, to an unknown land, with Collin. In Paris, she lives a free, independent life, meeting Hong Jong-wu, the first student to have come from Joseon to study there, and works with him in translating and publishing novels of Joseon into French. A great sorrow awaits her, however. She miscarries her baby. She suffers from depression and even somnambulism, because of her sorrow at the loss, homesickness for Joseon, and a longing for Gang Yeon, a court musician, her old friend since they were children. To ease her homesickness, Collin returns to Joseon with Lee Jin.
Hong Jong-wu returns to Joseon around the same time as well. Resenting Lee Jin for not accepting his love in Paris, he stirs up trouble for Lee Jin. Through his cunning scheme, Collin ends up returning to France, leaving Lee Jin behind, then is sent off to another country, and Gang Yeon leaves as well, his fingers cut off as punishment. Not long after, Japanese swordsmen attack the palace and assassin the Empress. Lee Jin witnesses the murder of the Empress. A few weeks later, she writes a letter to Collin about what happened to the Empress, hoping that he could deliver the truth to the West, dances the spring-parrot-dance one final time, and ends her life, by ripping out one poisoned sheet after another from her French-Korean dictionary and swallowing them.

"A breathtaking beauty"

"A sorrow like hot tears shed through longing lies deep within the sentences." - Chosun Ilbo

"This is a new-age historical novel, different from existing history novels, creating a boom of Korean novels." - Kyunghyang Daily News


About the Author
Shin Kyong-sook made her literary debut in 1985 when her novella “Winter Fables” won the Literary Joongang New Writer Award. She received the Hanguk Ilbo Literature Award(1993), Today’s Young Artist Award(1993), Hyundae Literature Award(1995), 1996 Manhae Literature Award(1996), Dong-In Literature Award, the 21st Century Literature Award(2000), Isang Literature Award(2001), and Oh Yeongsu Award(2006).
Her works include the short story collections, Till We Becomes a River, Where the Organ Once Was, Potato Eaters, Strawberry Fields, Bells; novels, Deep Sorrow, An Isolated Room, The Train Leaves at Seven, Violet, Lee Jin, Please Look After Mom; essay collections, Beautiful Shadow, Sleep! Sorrow, The House with Mountains, and The House with a Well.

A serious journey of a lonely soul, a touching coming-of-age story of a laborer.

An Isolated Room is one of the best novels describing the life in the 1980s in Korea and the difficulties faced by the working class in a period when human rights violations by corporations were common and people struggled to make a living with low wages. This story is based on the writer’s own experience in this era. It’s a story of a young idealistic girl who wants to be a writer, while her surrounding world seems to be against her.
The story begins with a phone call that “I” receives from a vocational school classmate. She asks me why I haven’t written about the time I spent with her at school in my most recent best selling book. She asks if it is because I am embarrassed that I didn’t graduate from a normal high school and instead went to a vocational school with her. The phone call reminds me of some of my bad memories of growing up poorly and coming to Seoul to work in a factory.
I grow up in a poor family in the country, and become so sick of farming and working in the field one day that I throw the tool I was using into a well. I decide to leave, and come to Seoul with my older brother at the age of sixteen. We find a tiny room that is part of a thirty-seven-room building, and before I have a chance to become used to the city, I start working in a factory making audio devices. I am paid only $1.00 a day, and worked twelve hours a day for six days, sometimes seven days a week.
Life is hard, but through it all I hold fast to my dream of becoming a writer. So, everyday I go to the vocational school to study after work. I am pursuing my dream, but my co-workers do not understand this. They become upset and they force me to leave the union.
About a year later, in the spring of 1979, I meet Hee-jae. She helps me when I am having trouble, and keeps my spirits up as I adjust to my new life. We spend a lot of time together, and she becomes more like a sister to me, than just a friend. However, she was having trouble with depression as a result of hard life, and she eventually commits suicide.

An autobiographical novel that is also a good insight into the period when the author was growing up. The strength, depth and beauty in this book are those that can only be shown in literature. Through the author’s penance in An Isolated Room, we can see the conflict between her instinctive fear about writing based on her own experiences and her strong will with which she has to overcome the fear. Here, we see the author using ellipsis constantly due to the obsession she has to say something which cannot be said. And it has become the unique narrative style of Shin Kyong-suk as “the author of introspection.” She shows the new realism in the form of, so called, meta-fiction, by “realistically” drawing the many-sided lives of people today.


“Shin Kyong-sook’s sentences are small like snowflakes. But at the end of her novel, the snowflake become an avalanche that is powerful enough to blow the reader’s mind.” Chosun Ilbo


*** The French edition of An Isolated Room (La Chambre solitaire, 2008) received Le prix de l´inaperçu, selected by the committee of journalists, literary critics and writers, given to the book of high literary quality but which did not get the praises it deserved during the year of publication. ***


About the Author
Shin Kyong-sook made her literary debut in 1985 when her novella “Winter Fables” won the Literary Joongang New Writer Award. She received the Hanguk Ilbo Literature Award(1993), Today’s Young Artist Award(1993), Hyundae Literature Award(1995), 1996 Manhae Literature Award(1996), Dong-In Literature Award, the 21st Century Literature Award(2000), Isang Literature Award(2001), and Oh Yeongsu Award(2006).
Her works include the short story collections, Till We Becomes a River, Where the Organ Once Was, Potato Eaters, Strawberry Fields, Bells; novels, Deep Sorrow, An Isolated Room, The Train Leaves at Seven, Violet, Lee Jin, Please Look After Mom; essay collections, Beautiful Shadow, Sleep! Sorrow, The House with Mountains, and The House with a Well.



 

A tornado of laughter and tears! Save your breast for the last page!

This novel is the story of the various ups and downs in the extraordinary and tumultuous lives of three women over a period of three generations. It is a story of so many things - - - loneliness, love, disappointment, death, despair, success, misunderstanding, crime, vengeance, hope and resilience. There seems to be hardly an aspect of human existence omitted.
Acting as a background and linking thread to the novel is the bitter old woman who runs a rice and soup restaurant. Incredibly ugly, she is unable to marry, and she spends her life working in other peoples’ kitchens. Eventually she sets up her own restaurant, relentlessly amassing money and vowing vengeance on the world. She hides all her money in the roof, but when she dies in an accident the money remains hidden, together with its curse.
Geum-bok is the character that dominates the first two parts of the book. Brought up in the countryside, she has an adventurous spirit and she goes to the seaside where she works for a fish merchant. Her subsequent marriage, suicide of her husband and her murder of the man that she mistakenly thinks killed him makes this part of her life a time of despair and disaster. Moving to the town of Pyeongdae, Geum-bok finds the fortune left by the old woman and sets up a brick factory which rakes in money. She then builds a film theatre, the most striking building in Pyeongdae. However, the money is cursed.
Thwarted in love, Geum-bok gives herself up to drink and burns down the theatre.
Our third woman is Chun-hui, Geum-bok’s daughter. Of massive build and dumb from birth, she learns all there is to know about brick making from her stepfather. However, she is wrongly charged with arson and sentenced to ten years in prison. She too seems cursed. Nonetheless, Chun-hui is wonderfully resilient. Returning to the ruined brick factory after her release from prison, she starts making bricks again. Despite further trials and tribulations, in course of time her skill is recognized and she becomes known as the “Queen of Red Bricks.”


"The main virtue of The Queen of Red Bricks is its incredible readability. There is not a boring moment in this book - - -a rare find."  Kyunghyang Daily News
 
"The charm of this novel lies in its brilliantly exaggerated description. The plausible absurdity of the plot and the language sweep the reader along like a giant snowball, reaching epic proportions."  Hankook Ilbo


About the Author
Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s writing career took off when he won the 2003 Munhakdongne New Writers Award for his short story “Frank and Me.” Only a year later in 2004, he won the 10th Munhakdongne Novel Award for The Queen of Red Bricks. He has also published a fiction collection entitled Marisa, the Merry Maid. In addition to fiction, Cheon has written screenplays such as “The Gunslinger” and “The Beijing Cuisine.”


 

840,000 copies sold
2005 Hanuri Reading Campaign Center Recommended Book
Njoy-school Recommended Book for Middle and High School Students
Essential Reading for Young People, selected by Jeonnam Province Education Office

The beautiful, sad, and touching life of salmon.

Salmon is the lead title of Munhakdongne’s Fables for Adults series. By depicting the life of the salmon, which swims upstream to its native river and then dies after spawning, it demonstrates allegorically the preciousness of life. Salmon is a story about the pain of growing up and about aching and ardent love.

Salmon tells the growth of a fish named Silver Salmon, who, while returning to his distant mother stream with his friends, loses a sister, falls in love with Clear-eyed Salmon, and ascends a waterfall. The sad yet beautiful fate of salmon, which die shortly after spawning, is fused into a warm and moving style of writing that leads the reader into a mysterious, hidden world.

A "novel-like fable" and a "fable-like novel," Salmon deals with a weighty theme, delving into the true nature of life and the pain of existence. Swimming upstream to one’s native river means pursuing something one cannot see, pursuing a dream - - it is an excruciatingly hard but beautiful goal. Silver Salmon’s realization that the purpose of his existence is to protect others here and now, to act as a support for others and not think of himself, provides a humble view of life.

The migration home of countless shoals of salmon, which have “eyes of the heart” in order to fulfill a pure and innocent love, shows the amazing splendor that is possible when man and nature meet. Within this splendor, the love of Silver Salmon and Clear-eyed Salmon is painful and yet resounds with sweet melody. Only those salmon that possess the gift of seeing the world in a beautiful light are able to fall in love and have the longing to become bound to the heart of another, to become a deep memory that can never be erased. Eyes that long to see that which is not visible, eyes that know how to visualize that which cannot be seen - such are "eyes of the heart." Silver Salmon’s love invites us to recover our own "eyes of the heart" so that we can pursue the pure and innocent love we have either forgotten or lost in the face of the binding realities of life.

About the Author
Ahn Do-hyeon was born in 1961 in Yeocheon, and graduated from Wonkwang University where he studied Korean literature. His writing career took off when he won the Daegu Maeil Shinmun Annual Literary Contest with his poem "Nakdong River" in 1981 and the Dong-A Ilbo Annual Literary Contest with his poem "Jeon Bong-jun Goes to Seoul" in 1984. Ahn also received the 1996 Young Poet´s Award and the 1998 Kim So-wol Literature Prize.
Ahn’s anthologies of poetry include Jeon Bong-jun Goes to Seoul, Bonfire, Lonely High Solitary, Beloved Fox, Post Office by the Sea, I Want to Go to You, Unable to Sleep?, Just Me and the Train, I Made a River to Go to You, and Earnestly Just Like a Child. Ahn’s prose works include In Times of Loneliness, Let Yourself be Lonely, Salmon, Relations, and Photograph Album.