Author: Yoon-kyung SHIM
Publisher: Munhakdongne
326 pages | 223*152mm
| Important! Please read before you order! |
| >>>This book is written in Korean. |
About This Book
"I am Yi Jin, a woman who records spirits."
The novel begins with Yi Jins narration. As she says, she "records
spirits" and that is what she lives for. She believes it to be her
destiny to record the spirits of not dead but living people, the
ordinary people around her. Asking her why is pointless. She has been
seeing spirits since so long ago in her childhood that she herself
cannot remember when it was, and begun to write down their stories as
naturally as she breathes.
Just as enigmatic as what Yi Jin does is the woman herself. Absolutely
indifferent and mindless in anything other than recording spirits and
totally incapable in the real world, she possesses a mysterious beauty
and royal lineage. She looks like someone who has just emerged from a
huge glacier. Then comes a man who falls in love with her.
"My name is Yi Hyun, a man who was in love with a woman recording
spirits."
He is a promising elite public official, working for the Finance
Ministry. In Yi Jin, he sees his childhood love, who shattered his young
soul. And he falls in love with Yi Jin, as if it were his fate. What he
offers to Yi Jin, totally preoccupied with recording spirits and
mindless of his feelings for her, is a three-year contract marriage
under the condition that he will not disturb her work. He finally
succeeds in marrying her, despite curses and warnings from her father,
Yi Se.
However, his goal of winning her love is unattainable. During his
marriage to Yi Jin, who sees no meaning in her daily life or in his love
for her, Yi Hyun has to endure much humiliation and the endless
questions that emerge, but still pours devotion that will never be
rewarded. But one day, he discovers Yi Jins record of the Finance
Minister that involves himself, and the relationship between Yi Hyun and
Yi Jin is brought to an unavoidable downward spiral, toward a tragic
end.
The Fatal Tragedy: Love
By vividly portraying Yi Hyuns fatal love for Yi Jin, the writer
attempts to present us with a heartfelt look at a man who strides
towards a tragic end, knowing his fate all too well. Yi Hyun devotes
himself to a frustrating, impossible love and accepts its result as it
is. He resembles Sang-nyong in Moon Altar who fearlessly pursues his
love and bravely meets its tragic end.
Sim Yun-gyeong once declared in her book, Moon Altar, that she would
defend the "unrecoiled passions of the past" against the recent trend of
Korean literary works, many of them light and upbeat. She undeniably,
and successfully, kept her words in her former work, and in her latest
work, Romance of Yi Hyun, she created a more traditional love story with
its solid story line, in a modern setting. One of her strengths as a
writer, the ability to revive traditional virtues in a modern style,
effectively reveals itself in this novel.
Yi Jin's records are independent and separate short stories, interwoven
with the plot at large, the love story of Yi Hyun and Yi Jin. Among
them, two works, Totoro's Home and La Campanella, were published in
literary journals in 2005 and the rests, Genesis and A Man Wearing a
Monocle, appear for the first time in the novel. Inserted in the main
plot as Yi Jin's records of living spirits, these stories help enhance
the books mysterious mood.
"In her new novel, Sim Yun-gyeong reveals her resolute views on mankind
and literature. In a time when sincerity, passion, and the search for
truth are considered things of the past, she presents us a model, a
tragic hero, implicitly criticizing the lightness of the modern world.
In her clear and elegant prose, she endearingly portrays an ill-fated
but courageous man who never attempts to avert conflicts or hind
disgrace, readily compromising himself. He is a tragic hero, determined
to embrace pain even when he knows all too well it would be to no avail.
The significance of this novel lies in that it focuses not on the pain
and the misery, but on the tragedy, which unavoidably is accompanied by
pain and misery. By doing so, she audaciously stands on the stage of
this hypocritical, gruesome post-capitalism era that fundamentally
hampers or makes it impossible to live life as a tragic hero." -- Jeong
Hye-gyeong, literary critic
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