Korean Literature

The 2020 Commission Report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks Against the United States is an exciting piece of "speculative fiction." The novel posits that there was a nuclear attack against the US on March 21, 2020 by North Korea, and that a national bipartisan commission was created to investigate what and how it happened. It's pretty scary stuff.

In this Korean folktale, a greedy merchant sells the shade from his tree to a passing traveler. What he doesn’t realize, however, is just how clever this traveler is! What happens when the merchant’s ploy backfires and the traveler decides to stay in the shade?

Yongju is an accomplished student from one of North Korea's most prominent families. Jangmi has had to fend for herself since childhood, most recently by smuggling goods across the border. Danny is a Chinese American teenager of North Korean descent whose quirks and precocious intelligence have long marked him as an outcast in his California high school. These three disparate lives converge when each of them travels to the region where China borders North Korea.

It’s as if her life only began once Moon appeared in it. The desultory copywriting work, the boyfriend, and the want of anything not-Moon quickly fall away when she beholds the idol in concert, where Moon dances as if his movements are creating their own gravitational field; on live streams, as fans from around the world comment in dozens of languages; even on skincare products endorsed by the wildly popular Korean boy band, of which Moon is the youngest, most luminous member. Seized by ineffable desire, our unnamed narrator begins writing Y/N fanfic.

This is the story of a hen named Sprout. No longer content to lay eggs on command only to have them carted off to the market, she glimpses her future every morning through the barn doors, where the other animals roam free, and comes up with a plan to escape into the wild - and to hatch an egg of her own. An anthem for individuality and motherhood, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly has captivated millions of fans in Korea, where it is a contemporary classic. Now the novel is making its way around the world.

In a world where Saints are monsters and Wonderland is the dark forest where they lurk, it’s been five years since young witches and lovers Caro Rabbit and Iccadora Alice Sickle were both sentenced to that forest for a crime they didn’t commit—and four years since they shattered one another’s hearts, each willing to sacrifice the other for a chance at freedom. Now, Caro is a successful royal Saint-harvester, living the high life in the glittering capital and pretending not to know of the twisted monster experiments that her beloved Red Queen hides deep in the bowels of the palace.

In the virtual city of Alegria, fantasies are made real, innumerable lifetimes are lived, and even death itself is a survivable experience. An escape from reality that changed the landscape of artificial intelligence, it is home to more than one hundred million people. Though it’s been six years since Alegria’s creator—revolutionary tech genius KC Kim—died of cancer, his legacy is alive in the pinnacle of KC’s genius: an AI named Allen who surges with KC’s memories.

Start speaking Korean in minutes, and grasp the language, culture and customs in just minutes more with Survival Phrases - Korean, a completely new way to learn Basic Korean fast! Survival Phrases - Korean will have you speaking with proper pronunciation from the very first lesson and prepare you with cultural insight, travel tips and other information to utterly shock and amaze your friends and family, travel companions and people you meet along the way.

When her friends gift her a 23-and-Me test as a gag, high school senior Chloe Kang doesn’t think much of trying it out. She doesn’t believe anything will come of it—she’s an only child, her mother is an orphan, and her father died in Seoul before she was even born, and before her mother moved to Oklahoma. It’s been just Chloe and her mom her whole life. But the DNA test reveals something Chloe never expected— she’s got a whole extended family from her father’s side half a world away in Korea.

Whale, set in a remote village in South Korea, follows the lives of many linked characters, including Geumbok, an extremely ambitious woman who has been chasing an indescribable thrill ever since she first saw a whale crest in the ocean; her mute daughter, Chunhui, who communicates with elephants; and a one-eyed woman who controls honeybees with a whistle. Brimming with surprises and wicked humor, Whale is an adventure-satire of epic proportions by one of the most original voices in international literature.

Heungbo and Nolbo are not only brothers, but also friends—until their father passes away. Overcome by greed, Nolbo turns Heungbo away and refuses to help him when Heungbo loses his crops. Can Heungbo forgive Nolbo? Will they learn to be a family again?

Written in Cho Nam-joo’s signature razor-sharp prose, Miss Kim Knows follows eight women as they confront how gender shapes and orders their lives. A woman is born. A woman is filmed in public without consent. A woman is gaslit. A woman is discriminated against at work. A woman grows old. A woman becomes famous. A woman is hated, and loved, and then hated again. As with Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, these microcosmic stories prove eerily relatable under Cho Nam-joo’s precise, unveiled gaze, offering another captivating read from an essential voice in fiction.

When his jet malfunctions, Captain Ward Millar makes a last-second decision to eject over enemy territory in North Korea before his plane explodes. His parachute barely opens before impact, saving his life, but the hard landing snaps both of his ankles. Unable to walk, Captain Millar is easily captured by North Korean and Chinese soldiers. His captors interrogate, threaten, and starve him in an attempt to extract strategic wartime information. He stalls the inevitable by feeding the enemy false information, but it’s only a matter of time before they discover his lies.

Phoebe Lin and Will Kendall meet in their first month at prestigious Edwards University. Phoebe is a glamorous girl who doesn't tell anyone she blames herself for her mother's recent death. Will is a misfit scholarship boy who transfers to Edwards from Bible college, waiting tables to get by. What he knows for sure is that he loves Phoebe. Grieving and guilt-ridden, Phoebe is drawn into a secretive cult founded by a charismatic former student with an enigmatic past.

Riley Oh can't wait to see her sister get initiated into the Gom clan, a powerful lineage of Korean healing witches their family has belonged to for generations. Her sister, Hattie, will earn her Gi bracelet and finally be able to cast spells without adult supervision. Although Riley is desperate to follow in her sister's footsteps when she herself turns 13, she's a saram - a person without magic. Riley was adopted, and despite having memorized every healing spell she's ever heard, she often feels like the odd one out in her family and the gifted community.

러시아의 문학의 위대한 거장 레프 똘스또이의 장편소설 『안나 까레니나』가 이명현 교수의 번역으로 열린책들에서 출간되었다. 『안나 까레니나』는 똘스또이의 예술적 재능이 한창 절정기에 달했을 때 집필된 작품으로, 『전쟁과 평화』, 『부활』과 더불어 그의 3대 대표작 중 하나로 평가받는 소설이다. 표도르 도스또예프스끼와 토마스 만, 윌리엄 포크너, 블라지미르 나보꼬프 등 세계의 대문호들이 이 소설에 대한 찬사를 아끼지 않았으며, 후대의 주요 작가들의 문학 세계에 지대한 영향을 미친 작품이다. 또한 생생한 감정선과 흥미로운 서사 덕에 각종 영화나 뮤지컬로도 수차례 제작되며 많은 이들의 꾸준한 사랑을 받았다.

THE #1 KOREAN BESTSELLER WITH OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD For fans of magical realism and the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series by Toshikazu Kawaguchi comes this cozy fantasy debut. What if there was a store that sold dreams? Which would you buy? And who might you become when you wake up? In a...

In crisp, unembellished prose, Eunyoung Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In "A Song from Afar", a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In "Secret", the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferry sinking hide the news of her death from her grandmother.

The master of military historical fiction turns his discerning eye to the Korean War in this riveting new novel, which tells the dramatic story of the Americans and the Chinese who squared off in one of the deadliest campaigns in the annals of combat: the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, also known as Frozen Chosin.

Elena Soo has always felt overshadowed. Whether by her more successful older sisters, her more popular twin brother, or her more outgoing best friend, everyone except Elena seems to know exactly who they are and what they want. But she is certain about one thing—she has no interest in going to prom. While the rest of the school is giddy over corsages and dresses, Elena would rather spend her time working to save the local community center. So when international K-pop superstar Robbie Choi shows up at her house to ask her to prom, Elena is more confused than ever.