Shadows of a Sound (English and Korean Edition)

Tells the stories of peasant farmers, soldiers, ghetto dwellers, and villagers living in modern Korea

Selecting short stories from the 50-year career of Korean novelist Hwang, editor and chief translator Holman has compiled a rewarding survey for Western readers that reveals an underlying unity of style and theme. In unadorned, realistic prose, Hwang details the lives of poor peasants and angry young men, innocent children and bitter elders, all set in a vivid natural world. Often the action is observed from a distance, filtered through an observer, a memory or a framing narrative. Some pieces are little more than vignettes; "Reeds" offers snapshot-like scenes of a young girl, her opium-addicted grandfather and a dying dog. The mood is established, and the connections are the reader's to make. "Drizzle" provides a brutal, depiction of a war-time killing, and "Old Man Hwang" a rueful portrayal of a cantankerous 60-year-old nursing regrets at his birthday feast. The effects are different, but the clarity of emotion in these stories make the author's reputation as one of Korea's best writers easy to understand.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The literature of Korea, unlike that of China and Japan, is still little known in the West, where translations of Korean literature are few and not widely available. Now, with the publication of these books, readers can become acquainted with two important contemporary Korean writers. Hwang, an award-winning author of fiction and poetry, has been writing short stories steadily for half a century. His collection is a representative selection of 27 stories dating from 1937 to 1983. Serviceably translated, these stories portray in sharp detail the harsh lives of the common people during a period of great political instability. Some have the earthy directness of folktales; others reach to address larger themes. All are tinged with a melancholy lyricism. Hwang has a particular affinity for the outcasts of society, and loneliness is the recurrent motif in these vividly evoked tales. Silver Stallion is the second novel by writer and translator Junghyo, whose White Badge , released earlier this year, was the first novel by a Korean to be published "commercially" in the United States. Set during the outbreak of the Korean War, it is the story of the effect of a U.N. Forces encampment on an impoverished village as seen through the eyes of its inhabitants. The novel centers on a young boy and his widowed mother, who is raped by a marauding pair of American soldiers. Weary of struggling to feed her two young children, and ostracized by the other villagers, she becomes a prostitute who entertains the "bengkos" (Yankees) in exchange for K-rations. To the villagers, the strange-looking bengkos represent a world far wealthier yet more barbaric than their own, and their incursion has tragic consequences, particularly for the children. Like Hwang, Junghyo has an eye for the gritty and pungent detail, and he has succeeded in translating his novel into an assured, idiomatic English.
- Christine Stenstrom, New York Law Sch . Lib .
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.