There’s an emotional stoicism to Hwang’s characters that might be misconstrued as flatness, but should be perceived as an idiosyncrasy of the author’s prose. The lives Hwang depicts are not easy ones, and could have been twisted into distasteful melodramas. The pain and suffering that Bari, Woohee, Minwoo, and the two brothers experience is more powerful for being muffled, filtered, as if their spirits and psyches were protected by layers of cotton wool. 

The above is a passage from my March review of three of Hwang Sok-yong’s novels for Guernica. I love these books. I love Sora Kim-Russell’s translations, the humanity of the characters, and the seamless way Hwang Sok-yong weaves the supernatural into the everyday. (It reminds me a bit of Cesar Aira, despite these two writers being nothing alike). The title of the essay, which I didn’t choose, is A Country on the Cusp of Change (Guernica, March 2020)… and, to be honest, I feel like this review got a little bit away from me. It became too much about the political and economic, maybe because the author has a history as a political activist that I felt I needed to talk about, and too little about the emotional way I connected with the characters. The two brothers in Familiar Things, Bari and her dog, Jung Woohee from At Dusk — I’m still thinking about them months later. We care about the ideas in the text because we care about the characters.

You can read the full review here.

Title: Familiar Things
Author: Hwang Sok-Yong
Translator: Sora Kim-Russell
Publisher: Scribe

Title: Princess Bari
Author: Hwang Sok-Yong
Translator: Sora Kim-Russell
Publisher: Scribe

Title: At Dusk
Author: Hwang Sok-Yong
Translator: Sora Kim-Russell
Publisher: Scribe