Korean Literary Fiction

A Most Anticipated Book of the Year: Time, The Washington Post, and Literary Hub A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise. One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim...

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 WINNER OF THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE ONE OF...

They were the young ones, the bright ones, the ones with the dreams. From the Nazi-prowled wastes of North Africa to the bloody corridors of Europe, they honorably answered the call. War - it was their duty, their job, their life. They marched off as boys and they came back - those who made it - as soldiers and professionals forged in the heat of battle....

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An epic journey into the heart of North Korea and the world’s most mysterious dictatorship. “Imagine Charles Dickens paying a visit to Pyongyang, and you see the canvas on which [Adam] Johnson is painting here.”—The...

FROM HAN KANG, WINNER OF THE 2024 NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE “[Han Kang writes in] intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”—from the Nobel Prize citation The internationally bestselling author of The Vegetarian presents a “rare...

June 1967. Joseph Ward watches his nineteen-year-old son board a bus to Fort Polk, Louisiana. It's the last time he'll see Daniel as a boy. For the next nineteen months, Joseph fights a war from his driveway in Kokomo, Indiana—checking the mailbox twice daily, watching Walter Cronkite count casualties, drinking alone in the basement while his son screams through nightmares eight thousand miles away. This is not another soldier's story. This is the war nobody writes about: the fathers who stood helpless while their sons walked into the jungle. The mothers who slept in empty bedrooms. The ...

ONE OF THE ATLANTIC’S GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS OF THE PAST 100 YEARS The debut novel from critically acclaimed and New York Times–bestselling author of On Such a Full Sea and My Year Abroad. In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life...

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 NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE A dazzling novel about the saving...

WINNER OF THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN TRANSLATED LITERATURE A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR A surreal, devastating story of a homeless ghost who haunts one of Tokyo's busiest train stations. Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Japanese Emperor, his life is...

Situated at the heart of a rapidly gentrifying district of Seoul, the Yeonnam-dong Smiley Laundromat is a place where the extraordinary stories of ordinary residents unfold. It is already a haven of tranquility and reflection for locals, but when someone leaves a notebook behind, the laundromat becomes a place that brings people together. One by one, customers start jotting down candid diary entries, opening their hearts and inviting acts of kindness from neighbors who were once just faces in the crowd.

A wildly original novel from a rising star of Korean literature—surreal, chilling fables that take on the patriarchy, capitalism, and the reign of big tech with absurdist humor and a (sometimes literal) bite. From an author never before published in the United States, Cursed Bunny is unique...

Readers of exciting, challenging and visionary literary fiction—including admirers of Norman Rush's Mating, Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, and Peter Matthiessen's At Play in the Fields of the Lord—will be drawn to this astonishingly gripping and...

Often considered the highest achievement in Korean fiction, The Nine Cloud Dream poses the question: Will the life we dream of truly make us happy? Written in 17th-century Korea, this classic novel's wondrous story begins when a young monk living on a sacred Lotus Peak in China succumbs to the temptation of eight fairy maidens. For doubting his master's Buddhist teachings, the monk is forced to endure a strange punishment: reincarnation as the most ideal of men.

National Book Award Finalist Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, best-selling author of The Namesake comes an extraordinary new novel, set in both India and America, that expands the scope and range of one of our most dazzling storytellers: a tale of two...

From the author and translator of the National Book Award finalist and Booker Prize shortlisted Cursed Bunny, comes a novel-in-ghost-stories, set in a mysterious research center that houses cursed objects, where those who open the wrong door might find it’s disappeared behind them, or that the...

From the acclaimed author and translator of the National Book Award Finalist, Cursed Bunny, a fresh, uncanny, and utterly profound collection of stories set in near and distant futures that reflect our deepest fears—and deepest desires. Bora Chung’s inimitable blend of horror, absurdity, and...

“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 Wall Street Journal Finalist for...

In 1948, Najin and Calvin Cho, with their young daughter Miran, travel from South Korea to the United States in search of new opportunities. Wary of the challenges they know will face them, Najin and Calvin make the difficult decision to leave their other daughter, Inja, behind with their extended family; soon, they hope, they will return to her. But then war breaks out in Korea, and there is no end in sight to the separation. Miran grows up in prosperous American suburbia as Inja grapples in her war-torn land with ties to a family she doesn't remember.

An excellent student from a poor, traditional family in Seoul, the narrator has absorbed the same message her whole life: Only a boy can provide the family with dignity and wealth. Not her. Not her three sisters. Receiving approval only for uncomplaining sacrifice, she has resolved to take on her family’s troubles. She is a good girl. And she knows what good girls must do.

From the bestselling author of Almond, The Devil Wears Prada meets The Office in this witty, humane, and ultimately transformative story of a group of young workers who rebel against the status quo. Jihye is an ordinary woman who has never been extraordinary. In her administrative job at the...