This is the 34th title to be published in the popular Hyundae Munhak PIN series which features only the most renowned and highly regarded contemporary writers in South Korea today. The novel was inspired by the famous fairy tale “The Elves and the Shoemaker” written by the Brothers Grimm, but contains the author’s own original twist on the story and her own reflection about life, dealing with themes such as impermanence, love, and what it means to be human.

Can there be love between mortal and immortal beings?

Once upon a time, there lived a poor shoemaker couple who were struggling to make ends meet and found themselves in dire need of help. Luckily for them, a group of master shoemaking elves appeared one day, and they began making pair after pair of beautiful and expensive leather shoes for the couple. In order to thank the little elves who didn’t have anything to wear, the husband and wife made small human clothes and shoes for them so they could keep warm during the winter. However, upon receiving the clothes and dressing up as humans themselves, the little elves became freed from their slave-like existence as shoemaking elves, and seeing no reason why they should continue making shoes for the couple, they all went their own separate ways.

One of those elves was Ahn, who now found himself working as a shoemaker in the human world. Although he had the appearance of a human, Ahn was an immortal being, and neither aged nor died. After being separated with her for many years, his closest sibling Mia appeared before him one day to ask him to make a pair of shoes for her prospective husband Yujin. Mia used to be a shoemaking elf as well, but upon joining the human world, had went on to pursue a different occupation. Although Mia was also immortal, her partner Yujin was a mere human who only had a limited time to live, and Ahn found it difficult to understand why she would want to get married to someone who was destined to grow old and die. Mia nonetheless urged Ahn to make her a pair of shoes, insisting that there was no time to waste, as each passing second brought her closer to her parting with Yujin.

Ahn had also loved someone in the past, but upon realizing that his immortality would have made it impossible for the two of them to lead an ordinary life together, he had painfully and reluctantly accepted to give up on their relationship and ran away.

Things would change after Ahn has an encounter with an old grandmother who comes looking for him with a pair of shoes to mend. It turns out she was the woman Ahn had loved 40 years earlier. Although time had changed her, his fond memories of her had not. His meeting with the old woman reminds him of their past and of how special the time they had spent together had been. Hadn’t the short time he had spent with her been more meaningful than the rest of his infinite existence? This realization triggers a change inside of him, and he finally begins to understand why Mia, despite their incompatibility, was willing to marry a human. Showing a change of heart and new found respect for Mia’s courage, he thus accepts to lend his sibling a hand and makes her a pair of shoes for Yujin.

The author uses leather shoes, which are vulnerable to the passing of time, as a metaphor for the lives of humans. Both wear out, and both have an existence characterized by impermanence. The Poetry of Stitches and Leather is a story of growth, of how an immortal being manages to live the immortality of humans vicariously through them. This novel reminds us that our impermanence is what makes us human, and that it is perhaps something we should be grateful for. If our time on earth wasn’t limited, would we still be driven to live and love fearlessly like we do?