Hwang Sok-yong’s At Dusk is a perfect slice of Koreana … shows the underbelly of a nation through the life of characters inhabiting society's bottom rung … Sok-yong proves once again that fiction can be the best way to tell devastating truths.”—Gabino Iglesias, NPR
“Having been imprisoned for political reasons, Hwang has a restrained, delicate touch, alive to the nuances of memory, the slipperiness of the past, and the difficult choices life forces us to make…Subtly political, deeply humane, a story about home, loss, and the cost of a country's advancement.”—Kirkus Reviews , starred review
“Here [Sok-yong] scrutinizes the quiet disconnect of contemporary relationships through the life of a successful, sixty–something Seoul architect … A piercing modern tale about all we can never know about our loved ones and ourselves.”—Terry Hong, Booklist , starred review
“Hwang is a master storyteller … his writing is sparse and evocative.”—Asymptote Journal
“Celebrated author Hwang Sok-yong explores the human toll of South Korea’s rapid modernization … Through the lens of Seoul’s urban housing and architecture, he traces the development of South Korean modernization and highlights the extremes to which its citizens are pushed, challenging readers in the process to reexamine if the nation’s transformation can truly be considered successful.”—International Examiner
“These characters illustrate South Korea’s sharp economic divides and explore what is required to improve one’s lot in life—and whether it’s even possible for more than a very few. It captures so much in under 200 pages: economic inequality; gender, class, and educational divides; and the complex relationships individuals and the culture at large have with their own history.”—Bookriot
“Hwang is a master storyteller … his writing is sparse and evocative.”—Asymptote Journal
Praise for the author:
“Hwang Sok-yong is undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the novel in Asia today.”—Kenzaburō Ōe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature
“Hwang Sok-yong is one of South Korea's foremost writers, a powerful voice for society's marginalized, and Sora Kim-Russell's translations never falter.”—Deborah Smith, translator of The Vegetarian
Praise for Princess Bari (Scribe, 2019)
“A mesmerizing odyssey through the beauty, suffering, and rage that flow from the irrepressible desire to live.”—Kirkus , starred review
“Combining brutal adversity, escapist fantasy, and deep humanity, Hwang … indelibly alchemizes the plight of the North Korean refugee, and refugees worldwide, into resonantly timely storytelling.”—Booklist
“Compelling and heartrending … In Hwang’s probing, compassionate work, Western readers unfamiliar with Eastern philosophy and culture will experience new takes on folkloric wisdom born of the enduring collective imagination.”—Los Angeles Review of Books
“[A]n unquestionably valuable book …Princess Bari deserves praise for offering the opportunity to confront difficult and timely subjects such as the environmental destruction caused by rapid modernization and the complicated nature of immigration and human trafficking.”—Reading in Translation
Praise for Familiar Things (Scribe, 2018)
“Galvanized by Nobel Prize-winner Kenzaburo Oe’s resounding endorsement—’undoubtedly the most powerful voice in Asia today’—and master translator Sora Kim Russell’s exquisite rendition, Hwang’s latest anglophonic import is surely poised for western success.”—Terry Hong, Booklist , starred review
"Familiar Things … serves as a powerful and potentially contentious reminder of the difficult backstory to South Korean success. As one of the country’s most prominent novelists, Hwang has never shied away from controversy…With Familiar Things , Hwang turns his attention to the underside of South Korea’s remarkable economic development, namely, the vast underclass it has created. Hwang’s riveting tale of second-class citizenship, in which the main characters are forced to pick through garbage to survive, gestures not just at the country’s past and what was lost during rapid modernization. It also serves as an implicit warning about the future of the Korean peninsula."—John Feffer, Boston Review
“One of South Korea’s most acclaimed authors … [In Familiar Things , Hwang] challenges us to look back and reevaluate the cost of modernization, and see what and whom we have left behind.”—The Guardian
“[A] vivid depiction of a city too quick to throw away both possessions and people.”—Financial Times
“Sora Kim-Russell’s translation moves gracefully between gritty, whiffy realism and folk-tale spookiness.”—The Economist
At Dusk has Hwang’s customary blend of fragility and brutality, of tenderness and raw pain… At Dusk is a journey through memory and through the necessary potential and duty of architecture; through human spaces and urban topographies of existence and non-being. For Korea, this is a novel that should mark a turning point in its sense of identity; for non-Korean readers, it is a blueprint of the critical elenchus we need to undertake before it is tragically far too late for all our local traditions, cultures and individual lives.”
Quietly probing.”
[A] beautifully observed tale…another superb novel from a writer at the top of his craft.”
What elevates this work, is how the gritty psychological exploration of contemporary Korean society is packagedwithin a taut and compelling mystery regarding how the two disparate narratives might be connected. At Dusk is another short but impactful novel from Hwang Sok-yong.”
A stirring and quietly moving novel …a sharply perceptive accountofthe struggle to maintain body and soul, roughly speaking,in the decades beforeChun dooh-hwan's military coup of 1980.” FIVE STARS
At Dusk provides the reader with an excellent picture of Seoul now and several decades ago, with a mournful, nostalgic feel pervading the novel…Hwang is a masterful storyteller, and the final third of the book skilfully brings the disparate stories together, with a clever, and surprising, twist to round matters ”
Tony's Reading List - Tony Malone
It’s a regretful, bittersweet exploration of modernisation, which picks away at the country’s past and present, slowly becoming a moving reflection of what we gain and lose as individuals and a society in the name of progress…[Hwang’s] writing is laced with the hard-won wisdom of a man with plenty left to say.”
[A] solid portrait of changing times and society.”
The Complete Review - M.A.Orthofer
The book is on the verge of something, and despite the gentle care in Hwang’s storytelling, there is an urgency to his words.”
Thoughtful and affecting.”
The Big Issue - Jane Graham
Hwang is a master storyteller…his writing is sparse and evocative.”
At Dusk is a book steeped in melancholy—for times gone by, for relationships lost or abandoned, for a world that no longer exists. Hwang delves deeply into the psyche of his characters and in doing so tells universal stories of love, ambition and regret…another superb novel from a writer at the top of his craft.”
At Dusk is a small but powerful novel from one of South Korea’s most esteemed novelists…The questions At Dusk raises are timeless, and perfect for more serious book-group discussions.”
★ 2019-04-28Princess Bari , 2019, etc.) latest novel, a successful architect from a poor family reconnects with his first love many decades later.
As the title suggests, Park Minwoo has reached his twilight years. Friends and colleagues are beginning to die. "No one should ever forget their roots," one tells him gravely, but Minwoo feels embarrassed by the thought. He grew up in a Seoul slum called Moon Hollow in "a shabby house with wooden boards instead of glass in the windows," his parents eking out a living selling fishcakes. Determined to escape, he studied hard, stayed in school, and did well on his university exams. The only other high school student in Moon Hollow was the beautiful and sought-after Cha Soona, who secretly loved him. For decades Minwoo has repressed Soona's significance to him; he married well, studied abroad, and pursued a career that helped modernize Korea. But when he receives Soona's memoir in an email, his wife has moved to the U.S. to be near their daughter, and his company is under scrutiny due to corruption scandals. Soona remembers Moon Hollow with cleareyed affection in spite of what she endured there; her account dredges up their shared past, forcing him to reconsider his achievements and reckon for the first time with what he lost. The chapters alternate between Minwoo's point of view and that of a young, struggling playwright whose connection to the story emerges only gradually. Having been imprisoned for political reasons, Hwang has a restrained, delicate touch, alive to the nuances of memory, the slipperiness of the past, and the difficult choices life forces us to make. Minwoo's reexamination of his past serves as a reminder of the communities destroyed in the search for a better, more modern Korea, the lives disrupted and displaced, and the people left behind.
Subtly political, deeply humane, a story about home, loss, and the cost of a country's advancement.
