Details

Subject(s)

• Yun, Ko-ŭn 1980-—Translations into English [Browse]

Translator

• Buehler, Lizzie [Browse]

Library of Congress genre(s)

• Short stories [Browse]

Getty AAT genre

• short stories [Browse]

Series

Weatherhead books on Asia [More in this series]

Summary note

"An office worker who has no one to eat lunch with enrolls in a course that builds confidence about eating alone. A man with a pathological fear of bedbugs offers up his body to save his building from infestation. A time capsule in Seoul is dug up hundreds of years before it was intended to be unearthed. A vending machine repairman finds himself trapped in a shrinking motel during a never-ending snowstorm. In these and other indelible short stories, contemporary South Korean author Yun Ko-eun conjures up slightly off-kilter worlds tucked away in the corners of everyday life. Her fiction is bursting with images that toe the line between realism and the fantastic. Throughout Table for One, comedy and an element of the surreal are interwoven with the hopelessness and loneliness that pervades the protagonists' decidedly mundane lives. Yun's stories focus on solitary city dwellers, and her eccentric, often dreamlike humor highlights their sense of isolation. Mixing quirky and melancholy commentary on densely packed urban life, she calls attention to the toll of rapid industrialization and the displacement of traditional culture. Acquainting the English-speaking audience with one of South Korea's breakout young writers, Table for One presents a parade of misfortunes that speak to all readers in their unconventional universality"-- Provided by publisher.

Notes

Translated from the Korean.

Contents

• Table for One
• Sweet Escape
• Invader Graphic
• Hyeonmong Park's Hall of Dreams
• Roadkill
• Time Capsule 1994
• Iceland
• Piercing
• Don't Cry, Hongdo.

Show 6 more Contents items

ISBN

• 9780231192026 (hardcover)
• 0231192029 (hardcover)
• 9780231192033 (paperback)
• 0231192037 (paperback)

LCCN

2023042657

OCLC

1404447982

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