Korean Literature in Translation

Books written in Korean and translated into English. Find a new-to-you read and expand your understanding of another culture.
Updated September 19, 2022
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The vegetarian : a novel
Han, Kang
Paper Book
FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE "[Han Kang's] intense poetic prose . . . exposes the fragility of human life."--The Nobel Committee for Literature, in the citation for the Nobel Prize A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ...
Human acts : a novel
Kang, Han
Paper Book
Gwangju, South Korea, 1980. In the wake of a viciously suppressed student uprising, a boy searches for his friend's corpse, a consciousness searches for its abandoned body, and a brutalised country searches for a voice. In a sequence of interconnected chapters the victims and the bereaved encounter...
I'll Be Right There : A Novel
Shin, Kyung-Sook
Paper Book
Set in 1980s South Korea amid the tremors of political revolution, I'll Be Right There follows Jung Yoon, a highly literate, twenty-something woman, as she recounts her tragic personal history as well as those of her three intimate college friends. When Yoon receives a distressing phone call from...
I'm waiting for you : and other stories
Kim, Bo-Young
Paper Book
"Her fiction is a breath-taking piece of a cinematic art itself. Reminiscent of the world we experienced in Matrix, Inception, and Dark City, still it leads us to this entirely original structure, which is a ground-breaking, mystic literary and cinematic experience. Indeed, powerful and graceful....
Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982: A Novel
Cho Nam-Joo
Ebook
Love in the big city
Pak, Sang-yŏng
Paper Book
Love in the Big City is an energetic, joyful, and moving novel that depicts both the glittering nighttime world of Seoul and the bleary-eyed morning-after. Young is a cynical yet fun-loving Korean student who pinballs from home to class to the beds of recent Tinder matches. He and Jaehee, his female...
Shoko's smile
Ch’oe, Ŭn-yŏng
Paper Book
In crisp, unembellished prose, Choi Eunyoung 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...
The waiting
Gendry-Kim, Keum Suk
Paper Book
The story begins with a mother's confession...sisters permanently separated by a border during the Korean War Keum Suk Gendry-Kim was an adult when her mother revealed a family secret: She had been separated from her sister during the Korean War. It's not an uncommon story--the...
The plotters
Kim, Ŏn-su
Paper Book
The important thing is not who pulls the trigger but who's behind the person who pulls the trigger - the plotters, the masterminds working in the shadows. Raised by Old Raccoon in The Library of Dogs, Reseng has always been surrounded by plots to kill - and by books that no one ever reads. In Seoul...
Almond : a novel
Sohn, Wŏn-p'yŏng
Paper Book
A BTS fan favorite! A WALL STREET JOURNAL STORIES THAT CAN TAKE YOU ANYWHERE PICK * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY'S STAY HOME AND READ PICK * SALON'S BEST AND BOLDEST * BUSTLE'S MOST ANTICIPATED  The Emissary meets The Curious Incident of the Dog in the...
The old woman with the knife
Ku, Pyŏng-mo
Paper Book
I want to die but I want to eat tteokbokki
Baek, Se-hee
Paper Book
_______________ THE PHENOMENAL KOREAN BESTSELLER TRANSLATED BY INTERNATIONAL BOOKER SHORTLISTEE ANTON HUR 'Will strike a chord with anyone who feels that their public life is at odds with how they really feel inside.' - Red ...
Endless Blue Sky: A Novel by Lee Hyoseok
Lee Hyo-Seok
Ebook

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