The most recent addition to the complete review is my review of Jang Eun-jin's No One Writes Back.
This is another in Dalkey Archive Press' new Library of Korean Literature-series -- and an interesting piece of work. It is, in many respects, an atypical Dalkey publication -- though since they gotten into this national literature series-business big time their offerings (in these areas) have become a bit more unpredictable: Ayşe Kulin, anyone ? (see their publicity page) an author whose other American publisher is ... AmazonCrossing ?
Dalkey have had books that I thought could do well as mass-market/airport-store titles -- Paul Verhaeghen's Omega Minor, for one. But this is something different, a bona fide crowd-pleaser that practically begs to be a book club selection. I'm surprised -- stunned -- no commercial publisher landed this one, which I think might be have been a better Korean title to try to break into the American market than the 2011 lead title, Shin Kyung-sook's Please Look After Mom.
The drawback of how it comes to market now is that that Dalkey imprint can be both a blessing and a curse -- and I'm not sure it'll find its natural audience here (especially in that look-alike-covered series -- which I think is great but might put off some readers). So, for example, as I write this, a few weeks after it came out, the Amazon.com page shows -- aside from a disappointing sales rank of 590,794 -- only six additional items under 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought'..... The first three are also titles from this series, followed by Sonallah Ibrahim's That Smell and Notes from Prison (New Directions), Amsterdam Stories by Nescio (NYRB), and another Dalkey title, Edouard Levé's Autoportrait. Good stuff -- very good ! -- but also pretty serious stuff, from smaller publishers, and nothing near as popular fare as this has the potential to be.
And people buying No One Writes Back should be the ones who also bought the more prominently marketed Korean titles -- say Kim Young-ha's I Have the Right to Destroy Myself -- as well as, of course, Please Look After Mom (the number two most-also-bought title (after another of his own) for I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, for example.
Here's also a case-study regarding the power of (some) reviews: No One Writes Back has been shamefully under-covered (though admittedly that flooding-the-market-with-ten-volumes-at-once schedule is a challenge for reviewers), but it got a glowing review from Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian just over a week ago -- and look here, the UK Amazon page sports both a much healthier sales-rank (an impressive 7,194 as I write this) and the 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought' list is much more diverse (and not at all Korean-centric -- surprisingly, it doesn't include any other Korean titles at this time).
(It also got a far less glowing review (scroll down) at Totally Dublin, but for now The Guardian review seems to have carried the day -- or at least influenced more book-buyers.)
Presumably, the titles in this series won't get all that much individual attention, reviewers at best lumping several (or all ?) together in omnibus reviews. It's too bad: as The Guardian recognized, this one certainly deserves to be looked at all on its own -- as do the others.
This is another in Dalkey Archive Press' new Library of Korean Literature-series -- and an interesting piece of work. It is, in many respects, an atypical Dalkey publication -- though since they gotten into this national literature series-business big time their offerings (in these areas) have become a bit more unpredictable: Ayşe Kulin, anyone ? (see their publicity page) an author whose other American publisher is ... AmazonCrossing ?
Dalkey have had books that I thought could do well as mass-market/airport-store titles -- Paul Verhaeghen's Omega Minor, for one. But this is something different, a bona fide crowd-pleaser that practically begs to be a book club selection. I'm surprised -- stunned -- no commercial publisher landed this one, which I think might be have been a better Korean title to try to break into the American market than the 2011 lead title, Shin Kyung-sook's Please Look After Mom.
The drawback of how it comes to market now is that that Dalkey imprint can be both a blessing and a curse -- and I'm not sure it'll find its natural audience here (especially in that look-alike-covered series -- which I think is great but might put off some readers). So, for example, as I write this, a few weeks after it came out, the Amazon.com page shows -- aside from a disappointing sales rank of 590,794 -- only six additional items under 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought'..... The first three are also titles from this series, followed by Sonallah Ibrahim's That Smell and Notes from Prison (New Directions), Amsterdam Stories by Nescio (NYRB), and another Dalkey title, Edouard Levé's Autoportrait. Good stuff -- very good ! -- but also pretty serious stuff, from smaller publishers, and nothing near as popular fare as this has the potential to be.
And people buying No One Writes Back should be the ones who also bought the more prominently marketed Korean titles -- say Kim Young-ha's I Have the Right to Destroy Myself -- as well as, of course, Please Look After Mom (the number two most-also-bought title (after another of his own) for I Have the Right to Destroy Myself, for example.
Here's also a case-study regarding the power of (some) reviews: No One Writes Back has been shamefully under-covered (though admittedly that flooding-the-market-with-ten-volumes-at-once schedule is a challenge for reviewers), but it got a glowing review from Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian just over a week ago -- and look here, the UK Amazon page sports both a much healthier sales-rank (an impressive 7,194 as I write this) and the 'Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought' list is much more diverse (and not at all Korean-centric -- surprisingly, it doesn't include any other Korean titles at this time).
(It also got a far less glowing review (scroll down) at Totally Dublin, but for now The Guardian review seems to have carried the day -- or at least influenced more book-buyers.)
Presumably, the titles in this series won't get all that much individual attention, reviewers at best lumping several (or all ?) together in omnibus reviews. It's too bad: as The Guardian recognized, this one certainly deserves to be looked at all on its own -- as do the others.