Winter in Sokcho
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4.5 • 6 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Prix Robert Walser — a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French-Korean author.
It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French-Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape. The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an ‘authentic’ Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows — the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.
An exquisitely crafted debut, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Dusapin’s voice is distinctive and unmistakable.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dusapin's luminous debut follows a young French Korean woman as she wrestles with desire, daughterhood, and identity. The narrator, 24, works as a receptionist at a guesthouse on the border of North and South Korea. Her boyfriend, Jun-Oh, a model who is away in Seoul, and her mother have pressured her to get plastic surgery to conform to the country's beauty standard, but she refuses. During the wintry off-season, French comic book writer Yan Kerrand checks in. She is captivated and unnerved by Kerrand's presence, and soon a flirtation develops. Kerrand is in search of inspiration for the final issue of his series, and the narrator agrees to teach him about the landscape and history of the area. As she contends with her mother's sharp and constant criticism, along with anxiety over the volatile state of life along the border ("We're on a knife-edge.... In a winter that never ends"), she falls in love with Kerrand, then worries he'll be driven away after Jun-Oh returns. Dusapin's precise sentences, expertly translated by Higgins, elicit cinematic images and strong emotions. This poignant, fully realized debut shouldn't be missed.
