The Naked Tree

by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, Janet Hong (Translator)

Overview

A delicate, timeless, and breathtaking coming-of-age classic, reimagined

Critically acclaimed and award-winning cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim returns with a stunning addition to her body of graphic fiction rooted in Korean history. Adapted from Park Wan-suh’s beloved novel, The Naked Tree paints a stark portrait of a single nation’s fabric slowly torn to shreds by political upheaval and armed conflict. Fleshing out the characters in fresh, imaginative ways, and incorporating the original author into the story, Gendry-Kim breathes new life into this Korean classic.

The year is 1951. Twenty-year-old wallflower Lee Kyeonga ekes out a living at the US military Post Exchange where goods and services of varying stripes are available for purchase. She peddles hand-painted portraits on silk handkerchiefs to soldiers passing through. When a handsome, young northern escapee and erstwhile fine artist is hired despite waning demand, an unlikely friendship blossoms into a young woman’s first brush with desire against the backdrop of the Korean War at its most devastating.

Gendry-Kim brings a masterpiece of world literature to life with bold, expressive lines that capture a denuded landscape brutally forced into transition and the people who must find their way back to each other within it. The Naked Tree is exquisitely translated by award-winning expert Janet Hong.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770466678
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	08/22/2023
Pages:	316
Sales rank:	225,141
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim was born in Goheung in Jeolla Province. She has cartooned the graphic novels Grass, The Waiting, La saison des pluies, Jiseul, Jun, The Naked Tree, and Alexandra Kim, a Woman of Siberia; the autobiographical comic The Song of My Father; the three-volume children’s comic Coquinette; the picture books The Baby Hanyeo Okrang Goes to Dokdo and A Day with My Grandpa; and the children’s book My Mother Kang Geumsun. Grass (Drawn & Quarterly, 2019) appeared on Best of the Year lists from the New York Times and the Guardian, and received the Cartoonist Studio Prize for the Best Print Comic of the Year, the Big Other Book Award for Best Graphic Novel in 2019, the Harvey Award for Best International Book, and the Krause Essay Prize in 2020.

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/26/2023

This adaptation by Eisner Award winner Gendry-Kim (The Waiting) of a seminal Korean novel by Park Wan-Suh possesses a rare power. Twenty-year-old Lee Kyeonga navigates 1950s Seoul, which is under siege by the North Korean army. Cynical and guarded, she lives with her mother and works at the Post Exchange, where she butters up American GIs so they’ll buy portraits of themselves painted on handkerchiefs. Gendry-Kim breathes life into this milieu in just a handful of striking panels, as Kyeonga convinces a vain saleswoman to write love letters in English to her American beau, develops an uncomfortable crush on a married portrait painter, and reels from an encounter with a GI who promises to “liberate” her in his hotel room. These fraught episodic vignettes are weighted by Kyeonga’s desperation to free herself from guilt and grief over the deaths of her two brothers in a bombing. “How could the Gods be so cruel?” Kyeonga recalls her mother crying out, “How could they take both my boys and leave only the girl behind?” Gendry-Kim brings this trauma full-force to her pages in bold, brushy inkwork, proving yet again that she’s an essential voice in global comics. It’s a masterful and devastating portrait of the lasting cruelties of wartime. Agent: Nicolas Grivel, Nicolas Grivel Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Told through gorgeously balanced brushstrokes.” —Michael Cavna and Jacob Brogan, The Washington Post

“Gendry-Kim... prov[es] yet again that she’s an essential voice in global comics. [This is] a masterful and devastating portrait of the lasting cruelties of wartime.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

“Gendry-Kim’s work, as always, remains uniquely her own—immersive, potent, enduring.” —ALA Booklist, Starred Review

“So much of this flowing, poetic graphic novel remains unspoken... what lingers are images of small figures plodding through dark, snowy nights and the contours of an empty, echoing family home.” —Library Journal, Starred Review

“Exceptionally adapted and illustrated... a compelling look at friendship, love, art and peace.” —Ms Magazine

“Readers who want to deepen their understanding of war, trauma, and Korean history will find much to treasure—and remember—in The Naked Tree.” —Graphic Medicine

“Gendry-Kim breathes new life into Park’s much lauded and nuanced study of families struggling with loss, poverty, and the erasure of social bonds.” —Lindsay Pereira, Broken Frontier

“Boldly expressive. An affecting coming-of-age story amidst political upheaval, foreign occupation, and the devastations of war.” —Library Journal, Best Graphic Novels of 2023

“An expertly controlled unfurling of fresh emotions.” —The Washington Post, Best Graphic Novels of 2023

From the Publisher

★ 07/14/2023

Lee Kyeonga, a young woman living with her taciturn mother in Seoul during the Korean War, does her best to get by. She works in an American Military Post Exchange, managing a team of amateur painters who create portraits on handkerchiefs for soldiers to buy as souvenirs. When a moody, mysterious young man joins their team, she's taken with his talent and his barely concealed melancholy. A tenuous friendship between the pair offers a glimpse of life beyond her purgatorial day-to-day, if only in that she's able to form a connection to someone else's existential dis-ease. So much of this flowing, poetic graphic novel remains unspoken, an impossible longing for escape—from wartime, from economic paralysis, from a home haunted by a family tragedy hinted at and ultimately gut-wrenchingly revealed in the book's final act, from a young adulthood empty of romantic love. Gendry-Kim's (The Waiting) expert translation, from the original novel penned in 1970 to the graphic form, often focuses on simplified faces in tense dialogues, but what lingers are images of small figures plodding through dark, snowy nights and the contours of an empty, echoing family home. VERDICT A murmured wartime memory that speaks volumes about the difficult depths of the solitary human condition.—Emilia Packard

Library Journal