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South Korea, Of specific Lesbian interest, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Fiction in translation
A neglected young woman experiences the violence and isolation of contemporary Korean society, from the two million copy bestselling author of PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER
South Korea, 1970. San is a lonely child, ostracised from her community. She soon finds a friend in a girl called Namae, until one afternoon changes everything. Following a moment of intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently rejects San, setting her on a troubling path.
We next meet San, aged twenty-two, when she happens upon a job at a flower shop in Seoul's bustling city centre. Over the course of one hazy, volatile summer, San is introduced to a curious cast of characters - the mute shop owner, a brash co-worker, kind farmers and aggressive customers - and fuelled by a quiet desperation to jump-start her life, she plunges headfirst into obsession with a passing magazine photographer. Throughout it all, San's moment with Namae continues to linger in the back of her mind.
A story of thwarted desire, misogyny and erasure, Violets reveals the high stakes involved in one woman's desperate search for both autonomy and attachment in an unforgiving society.
More books by Kyung-Sook Shin
Praise for Violets: From the bestselling author of Please Look After Mother
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Darkly beautiful, Violets explores the toll of abandonment and the relentless marginalization of a helpless young woman . . . Shin writes of the cruelty and dangers of disempowerment, and an ensuing spiral of despair
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Shin Kyung Sook tells us a story which takes place both in a foreign land and in a very familiar space in our hearts. Human beings' everlasting agony of "longing to belong" presents itself in every page of this book with intensity and with beauty. A subtle, deep, unique work of true literature
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Violets is a moving delve into a lonely psyche, with writing raw and sophisticated, tenderhearted and clear-eyed. Vividly translated by Anton Hur, Shin Kyung-sook's novel is also an intimate, sideways portrait of Seoul through the eyes of a rural outsider who roams the bright lights and big city not in pursuit of ambitious dreams, but seeking care and human touch
Kyung-Sook Shin
Kyung-Sook Shin is one of South Korea's most widely read and acclaimed novelists. She has been honored with the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Dong-in Literature Prize, and the Yi Sang Literary Prize, Mark of Respect Award (2012), and Ho-Am Prize for an Art (2013) as well as France's Prix de l'InaperA u and Man Asian Literary Prize (2011). She is the author of many prior works of fiction in addition to PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER, which has been published in 41 countries, and was on the New York Times bestselling list. Shin was a visiting scholar at Columbia University from 2010 to 2011. She currently lives in Seoul.
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