Beyond language
Indeterminate Inflorescence is a collection of aphorisms on poetry-writing taken from the creative writing lectures of Lee Seong-bok, one of South Korea’s most prominent living poets. These 470 meditations, collected by his students, are evocative micro-poems in their own right. Some express ideas at once familiar and breathtakingly new – truths we could sense but not put...
History train
‘Mater’ comes from the Japanese abbreviation for ‘mountain’. During Japanese colonialism, fifty Mater 1 locomotives, modelled after their Mountain-type counterparts in the United States, were built in Gyeongseong (Seoul) and at the Kisha Seizo factory in Japan. The thirty-three-carriage Mater 2, an improved version manufactured by Kawasaki Heavy Industries, was introduced and operated mainly in...
Yun Ko-eun: Into the wreckage
Yun Ko-eun’s disconcerting and darkly funny novel The Disaster Tourist follows the misfortunes of Yona, a disgruntled coordinator for the travel company Jungle. Yona’s employer organizes guided tours to destinations that have been traumatized by disaster – earthquakes, floods, fires and war, amongst dozens of other categories. When she threatens to quit her job after...
The sins of our future
Many years ago, a young boy from an affluent Egyptian family was travelling with his parents by train to their summer house somewhere deep down the valley of the River Nile. This was a journey he had made many times as he grew older. Each time, the curtains of their first-class carriage were pulled tightly...
A dream of good fortune
“When he’d heard the name ‘Flower Island’, he thought they were going to some paradise overlooking the ocean” – with not much more than these words, a thirteen-year old and his mother must choose between a life of increasing impoverishment and a promised alternative of redeeming ‘enoughness’. The choice seems obvious, and in Familiar Things...
Filthy treasures at Flower Island
Bugeye heard indistinct chatter around him in his sleep, but decided to stay curled up and ignore it. “Wake up, honey,” his mother said, pulling the blanket off him. “It’s time to go to work.” She shook Bugeye, who managed to sit up but still had his eyes closed, and then stood him up by...
