Swell

Each story in Swell launches from the common but pivotal moments that determine the course of everyday life, but they’re often filtered through the perspective of someone else: documentarians, novelists, storytellers, gossips. Then, as the stories build atop one another and intertwine, they begin to shift and destabilize. Characters return but their histories are changed, alternate timelines open, and no one is ever who they were.

Like an optical illusion this book offers two complete pictures. Viewed as individual stories, contemporary Korean lives are rendered with sensitivity and realism—relationships tatter and bereaved loved-ones search for ways to move on. Viewed as a complete collection, though, a stranger narrative emerges, in which there is perhaps some invisible logic behind everything, incomprehensible to us. Wholly original, Swell, translated by Janet Hong, is a book full of trap doors, hidden passageways, and the unsolvable mystery behind everyday life.

Since making her debut in 2009, Son Bo-mi has written numerous novels and short story collections, including Dear Ralph Lauren, Little Village, Swell, and The Fireflies of Manhattan. She has received virtually every major literary prize in Korea, such as the prestigious Yi Sang Literary Award, the Daesan Literary Award, the Munhakdongne New Author Award (four times!), and many more.

Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. She received the 2018 TA First Translation Prize and the 2018 LTI Korea Translation Award for her translation of Han Yujoo’s The Impossible Fairy Tale, which was also a finalist for the 2018 PEN Translation Prize and the 2018 National Translation Award. She’s a two-time winner of the Harvey Award for Best International Book for her translations of Keum Suk Gendry-Kim’s Grass and Yeong-shin Ma’s Moms. Other recent translations include Ha Seong-nan’s Bluebeard’s First Wife (selected as Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of 2020) and Kwon Yeo-sun’s Lemon. She has been the Korean prose mentor for ALTA’s Emerging Translator Mentorship Program since 2020.