Read the World: South KoreaUnpublished

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As Sumi waits for the train that will bring her mother back after a long absence, Grandmother tells how her family escaped on a train from Seoul, Korea, at the last moment before the Korean War began.

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 ...

"This first-person novel is a devastatingly clear-eyed view of societal restrictions and their effects on the young narrator's family in 1960s Seoul... . This is a universal novel, demonstrating the powerful effect the adult world has on children's lives." - The Horn Book, starred review

When Soah's impoverished, desperate village decides to sacrifice her to the Water God Habaek to end a long drought, they believe that drowning one beautiful girl will save their entire community and bring much-needed rain. Not only is Soah surprised to be rescued by the Water God - instead of killed...