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ISBN
9788932042008
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Author
Kim Hye-jin김혜진
- Publisher
-
Year Published
2023
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Category
Literary Fiction 소설
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Updated: 2024-08-30
- Posted by Moonji Publishing co., Ltd. on 2024-08-29
Description 작품 소개
“Some feel-good images emerged and disappeared like a mirage.”
Desperate wishes to seize the slightest possibility
The once-in-a-lifetime portrait of hope that we all dream of
Published in November 2023, Blessings is the third short story collection of Kim Hye-jin, an inimitable talent in Korean
literature. Having started her writing career in 2012, the author has won major literary awards in Korea and abroad
throughout the past decade. The rights to her novel, Concerning My Daughter, have been sold to numerous publishers
internationally, including in Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, the U.K., and France, among others. Blessings,
published after a three-year hiatus since her second book of short stories, encloses the author’s outstanding works
that have instantly garnered attention from the literary world, such as “Cotton Mansion,” the winner of the 2021
Munhakdongne Young Writer’s Award; “Miae,” the winner of the 2022 Award; and “Blessings,” shortlisted for the 2022
Kim Yu-jeong Literary Award. During her acceptance speech at the 2023 Kim Yu-jeong Literary Award ceremony last
August, Kim Hye-jin remarked, “The award feels like a request, a command that I can keep trusting the innumerable
coincidences and misunderstandings.” Having endeavored to explicate such coincidences and misunderstandings in the
throes of life, the author faces conflicts with much thicker skin in this short collection.
While all eight stories in Blessings are about housing, the physical qualities of a home are rarely described. Instead,
what’s covered in length are the people inhabiting the homes, the times they spend there, and the relationships formed
through housing. In Korean society, where according to literary critic Yi So “the commercial value of a home overpowers
its function as a place of residence,” the happenings around the homes embody the unmitigated clash against the class,
gender, regional, and generational norms.
Blessings illustrates its social commentary through the characters who come from a range of social backgrounds.
Whether a realtor or a janitor, the individuals bearing their own myriad reasons incessantly spew words at each other.
Gushed unilaterally, the words dissipate without reaching anybody’s ear, while the words that are truly important do not
even make it out of the mouth. Even in the predicament where “what’s spoken is up to the speaker” and “what’s heard
is up to the listener” (from “Bicycle and the World”), they ask one another, “You see what I’m saying? Do you know what
I mean?” Concentrating all their might on speaking and listening to the stories that “are too remote and can never be
grasped,” the characters in Blessings persist in seeking the possibility of communication despite continued failures. Amid
the coincidences and misunderstandings born of words and silence, they realize that we need “imagination more than
comprehension” to have an honest conversation.
Kim Hye-jin began her literary career in 2012 by winning the Dong-A Ilbo New Writers Contest. She is the author of the short story collections Eobi, A Living Called You, and The Perfect Taste of Cake, as well as the novels Autobiography of Me and Fire, Jungang Station, Concerning My Daughter, Number Nine’s Work, and Counsel Culture. Her honors include the 2013 JoongAng Ilbo Literary Award for Long-form Fiction, the 2018 Shin Dong-yup Prize for Literature, the 2020 Lee Hochul Literary Prize for Peace, the 2020 Daesan Literary Award, the 2021 and 2022 Munhakdongne Young Writer’s Award, and the 2023 Kim Yu-jeong Literary Award.
Author Bio 작가 소개
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