The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jang Jung-il's 1992 novel, When Adam Opens his Eyes, forthcoming soon from Dalkey Archive Press.
This is a book that also comes with one of the best publicity-material-copy descriptions (or at least one displaying the most chutzpah) that I've seen in a long time:
This is part of Dalkey Archive Press' new 'Library of Korean Literature' (or 'Library of Korea' ? I'm still unclear about that detail ...), an interesting collaborative effort with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea; see Dalkey head John O'Brien's recent piece on Creating a Library of Korean Literature, which offers some background.
I recently got ARCs of seven of the first ten titles (and was very excited):
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There are some impressive numbers being thrown around here -- twenty-five titles to be published in just the next two years, for example -- and: "The entire project will cost approximately $750,000".
Also interesting:
I certainly do hope that 'media event' materializes -- that's kind of hard to orchestrate. (I note also that the publication dates listed at Amazon differ for the US and UK -- 24 October in the UK (but 19 September for the Kindle edition), and 7 October in the US (19/26 September for the Kindle version) -- a forceful, precise statement as to when exactly this media event is meant to happen would probably be helpful (the ARCs and publicity material also provide no precise date).
(I am slightly concerned that there is no information about any of this yet up at the Dalkey Archive site -- still in some transition from its previous incarnation, I understand (sigh), but still ..... Not only are there no pages for the individual books or the whole series, or any relevant press releases (that I could find), but the catalogue index that lists countries-of-origin for all the Dalkey titles doesn't even include Korea .....)
The Jang novel is the first one I tackled, but I'm looking forward to working my way through all of these -- and wonder if this series will help establish a necessary critical mass of available works that will allow for a true breakthrough of K-lit in the English-language market. It will be interesting to see .....
This is a book that also comes with one of the best publicity-material-copy descriptions (or at least one displaying the most chutzpah) that I've seen in a long time:
A preposterous coming-of-age story, melding sex, death, and high school in a manner reminiscent of some perverse collision between Georges Bataille and Beverly Cleary(I wonder if any other book has ever been described as resembling both Georges Bataille and Beverly Cleary .....)
This is part of Dalkey Archive Press' new 'Library of Korean Literature' (or 'Library of Korea' ? I'm still unclear about that detail ...), an interesting collaborative effort with the Literature Translation Institute of Korea; see Dalkey head John O'Brien's recent piece on Creating a Library of Korean Literature, which offers some background.
I recently got ARCs of seven of the first ten titles (and was very excited):
There are some impressive numbers being thrown around here -- twenty-five titles to be published in just the next two years, for example -- and: "The entire project will cost approximately $750,000".
Also interesting:
In the fall of 2013, the first 13 books in the Library of America [sic] will be published, and 12 will be published the following year. These books will all be published on the same day in the U.S., the U.K., and Ireland, and will thereby become a media event because of the large number of books being published and the simultaneous publication.[That 'Library of America'-slip -- missed also by the Korean editors here -- looks uncomfortably Freudian to me.]
I certainly do hope that 'media event' materializes -- that's kind of hard to orchestrate. (I note also that the publication dates listed at Amazon differ for the US and UK -- 24 October in the UK (but 19 September for the Kindle edition), and 7 October in the US (19/26 September for the Kindle version) -- a forceful, precise statement as to when exactly this media event is meant to happen would probably be helpful (the ARCs and publicity material also provide no precise date).
(I am slightly concerned that there is no information about any of this yet up at the Dalkey Archive site -- still in some transition from its previous incarnation, I understand (sigh), but still ..... Not only are there no pages for the individual books or the whole series, or any relevant press releases (that I could find), but the catalogue index that lists countries-of-origin for all the Dalkey titles doesn't even include Korea .....)
The Jang novel is the first one I tackled, but I'm looking forward to working my way through all of these -- and wonder if this series will help establish a necessary critical mass of available works that will allow for a true breakthrough of K-lit in the English-language market. It will be interesting to see .....