One thousand chestnut trees: a novel of Korea

by Mira Stout
How best to prepare for a trip to Korea? Forget the kimchi experiments and immerse yourself in a novel thats thick
with the people, the history, and the feel of Korea. Mira Stouts protagonist is Anna (based loosely on Stout herself), a
young artist who lives in New York and feels lost. Knowing little about her Boston Irish father and her Korean mother,
and less still about Korea, she decides to journey to Korea, as Mira Stout herself did, to try to make sense of the
random jigsaw pieces of her backgroundtidbits like the story of her great-grandfather, once the ruler of Kangwon
Province, who was stripped of land and title by the invading Japanese and ordered a temple be built atop the highest
mountain amidst 1,000 chestnut trees.
In the novel, Annas Korean curiosity begins as a teenager, when Uncle Hong-do arrives from Korea to visit Annas
mother, the sister he never met. Years later, Anna turns to Korea as an answer to her feelings of existential angst,
retracing her mothers steps in an effort to see my family undie. Told in her voice as well as her mothers and
grandfathers, what you get is a stirring novel that combines Koreas epic history with a family legacy and a personal
exploration. A fine read whether youre going to Korea or lounging in your living room, Stouts story is engrossing and
educational.
Please Look After Mom
by Kyung-Sook Shin
A million-plus-copy best seller in Koreaa magnificent English-language debut poised to become an international
sensationthis is the stunning, deeply moving story of a familys search for their mother, who goes missing one
afternoon amid the crowds of the Seoul Station subway. Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a
daughter, son, husband, and mother, Please Look After Mom is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in
Korea and a universal story of family love. You will never think of your mother the same way again after you read this
book.
Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2011: There is a simple, yet remarkable, scene in Kyung-sook Shins novel,
Please Look After Mom, where the books title character visits her adult son in Seoul. He lives in a duty office in the
building where he works, because he cant afford an apartment. At night, they sleep on the floor and she offers to lie
next to the wall to shield him from a draft. I can fall asleep better if Im next to the wall, she says. And with this
gesture, we catch a glimpse of the depth of love she has for her first-born and the duty-bound sacrifices shes made
on behalf her family. Please Look After Mom is the story of a mother, and her familys search for her after she goes
missing in a crowded train station, told through four richly imagined voices: her daughters, her oldest sons, her
husbands, and finally her own. Each chapter adds a layer to the storys depth and complexity, until we are left with an
indelible portrait of a woman whose entire identity, despite her secret desires, is tied up in her children and the
heartbreaking loss that is felt when family bonds loosen over time. Kyung-sook Shins elegantly spare prose is a joy to
read, but it is the quiet interstitial space between her words, where our own remembrances and regrets are allowed to
seep in, that convicts each one of us to our core.

Silver Stallion: A Novel of Korea

Junghyo Ahn
In a mountain village in Korea, 1950, the memory of the Japanese occupation has just begun to fade when the
farmers hear that the World Army, led by the great American General Megado has landed at Inchon.
The second novel by this popular Korean writer offers an intimate, mournful perspective on the Korean War, as the
harmony of a tiny village is destroyed by the arrival of friendly foreign troops. In 1950, the hamlet of Kumsan is much
the same as it was a century earlier; a rich elder serves as the arbiter of propriety, children play together in gangs,
men farm and women run the households. But when air raids begin and Western soldiers (called bengkos big
noses) set up camp, Kumsans delicate structure collapses. The author keeps his scale small but faultlessly detailed,
letting events unfold primarily through the eyes of Mansik, a young boy whose mother is raped by soldiers and then
shunned by the other villagers; eventually, she seeks work in a prostitute shantytown to feed her children. Though his
subjects the casual devastation wrought by armies and the cruel hypocrisy that can seethe within small
communities are anything but new, the author handles them with passion and precision.
A Single Shard
by Linda Sue Park
Park (Seesaw Girl) molds a moving tribute to perseverance and creativity in this finely etched novel set in mid- to late
12th-century Korea. In Chulpo, a potters village, Crane-man (so called because of one shriveled leg) raises 10-yearold orphan Tree Ear (named for a mushroom that grows without benefit of parent-seed). Though the pair reside
under a bridge, surviving on cast-off rubbish and fallen grains of rice, they believe stealing and begging made a
man no better than a dog. From afar, Tree Ear admires the work of the potters until he accidentally destroys a piece
by Min, the most talented of the towns craftsmen, and pays his debt in servitude for nine days. Park convincingly
conveys how a community of artists works (chopping wood for a communal kiln, cutting clay to be thrown, etc.) and
effectively builds the relationships between characters through their actions (e.g., Tree Ear hides half his lunch each
day for Crane-man, and Mins soft-hearted wife surreptitiously fills the bowl). She charts Tree Ears transformation
from apprentice to artist and portrays his selflessness during a pilgrimage to Songdo to show Mins work to the royal
court he faithfully continues even after robbers shatter the work and he has only a single shard to show. Readers will
not soon forget these characters or their sacrifices.