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
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...
Grass
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
Paper Book
Appeared on best of the year lists from The New York Times, The Guardian, and more! Winner of The Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Print Comic of the Year! Grass is a powerful antiwar graphic novel, telling the life story of a Korean girl named Okseon Lee...
Human Acts
Kang Han
Paper Book
From the internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian, a "rare and astonishing" (The Observer) portrait of political unrest and the universal struggle for justice. In the midst of a violent student uprising in South Korea, a young boy named Dong-ho is...
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
Cho Nam-Joo
Paper Book
Kim Ji-young is an "ordinary woman" in her thirties, with a husband and daughter and a home in the suburbs. One day she begins to behave abnormally, and her concerned husband arranges for her to attend counseling sessions. The doctor's notes of their conversations with Ji-young reveal her...
Lemon
Yeo-sun Kwon
Paper Book
New York Times Book Review: Editor's Choice  Philadelphia Inquirer: Best Book of the Month   World Literature Today: Notable Translation of the Year   CrimeReads: Best International Crime Novel of the Year Ms. Magazine:...
Love in the Big City
Sang Young Park
Paper Book
A funny, transporting, surprising, and poignant novel that was one of the highest-selling debuts of recent years in Korea, Love in the Big City tells the story of a young gay man searching for happiness in the lonely city of Seoul Love in the Big City is the English...
Please Look After Mom
Kyung-sook Shin
Paper Book
A million-plus-copy best seller in Korea—a magnificent English-language debut poised to become an international sensation—this is the stunning, deeply moving story of a family’s search for their mother, who goes missing one afternoon amid the crowds of the Seoul Station subway.
The Waiting
Keum Suk Gendry-Kim
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 Good Son: A Novel
Jeong You Jeong
Paper Book
"Ingeniously twisted." --Entertainment Weekly, "Must List" "Will leave even the most seasoned crime fiction readers guessing." --CrimeReads "[Jeong] maintains suspense about her inhuman-seeming protagonist's fate until the bitter end." --The...
The Plotters
Un-su Kim
Paper Book
"[A] powerhouse of a novel....It reads as if Haruki Murakami rewrote The Day of the Jackal." - Locus Magazine "Editor's Choice" New York Times Book Review "The Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2019" CrimeReads "Most...
Almond: A Novel
Won-pyung Sohn
Paper Book
Yunjae nació con alexitimia, una enfermedad que le impide reconocer y expresar emociones, y que está asociada a un crecimiento inferior de la amígdala cerebral, generalmente del tamaño de una almendra. Su madre soltera y su abuela hacen todo lo posible por ayudarlo a relacionarse con los demás, si...
My Brilliant Life
Kim Ae-ran
Paper Book
A BEST OF THE MONTH SELECTION BY OPRAH MAGAZINE AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2021 "An eminent South Korean talent makes her American début in this poignant watercolor of a novel . . . Kim is a writer on the move." --O, The Oprah Magazine Ae-ran Kim's My...
City of Ash and Red
Pyun Hye-young
Paper Book
NAMED AN NPR GREAT READ OF 2018 From the Shirley Jackson Award-winning author of The Hole, a Kafkaesque tale of crime and punishment hailed by Korea's Wall Street Journal as "an airtight masterpiece." Distinguished for his talents as a rat...

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