Author: PAK Kyongni
Publisher: Maronie
20-volume set
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| >>>This book is written in Korean. |
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About This Book
A novelist noted for her sharply critical eye and panoramic perspective, PAK
Kyongni (1926~) is a survivor of the Korean War during which she lost many loved
ones including her husband. PAK began her life as a writer with the publication
of two short stories, Calculations and Black is Black, White is White. She has
since received numerous literary prizes, including the Woltan Literature Award
for Land.
PAK is best known for the multi-volume novel Land, a
monumental epic in five parts that weaves shifting fortunes of a single clan
into the turbulent history of modern Korea. The work begins during the final
days of Joseon Dynasty and ends with Korea's liberation from the Japanese rule;
the narrative follows four generations of the Choi clan, a family of wealthy
landowners in Hadong region of South Gyeongsang Province, who become witness to
the cataclysmic changes in Korean society, from the dissolution of the
traditional sociopolitical hierarchy and family system and the influx of Western
materialism, to the reality of colonial domination and concomitant struggle for
independence. Underlying the work's grand scale and acute historical awareness
is fundamental affirmation of life. Land, invoking the double image of womb and
tomb, embraces human suffering and gestures toward healing. PAK Kyongni's
ability to keep in sight both the minute and the grand, to relate events of
personal importance to the national context in which they occur and to intimate
a philosophical insight regarding human nature itself, has made Land a modern
classic.
PAK Kyongni's interest in ordinary lives of individuals living through an
extraordinary age can be seen in her earlier work as well. A notable feature of
PAK's fiction from the 1950s is the employment of female protagonist who has
been widowed during the Korean War. The Age of Distrust, The Road without
Guidepost, and The Age of Darkness all probe the deep scars left by the war on
Korean society through the eyes of the women bereft of their husbands as well as
material and spiritual support. The pervasive climate of loneliness and
uncertainty after the war is poignantly captured in her novel Drifting Island.
The novel's depiction of the psychological wanderings of a lonely woman trapped
in hardships of life provides a powerful indictment of post-war Korean society
at large.
*** Pak passed away on May 5, 2008.
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