The Naked Tree
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A delicate, timeless, and breathtaking coming-of-age classic, reimagined
Critically acclaimed and award-winning cartoonist Keum Suk Gendry-Kim returns with a stunning addition to her body of graphic fiction rooted in Korean history. Adapted from Park Wan-suh’s beloved novel, The Naked Tree paints a stark portrait of a single nation’s fabric slowly torn to shreds by political upheaval and armed conflict. Fleshing out the characters in fresh, imaginative ways, and incorporating the original author into the story, Gendry-Kim breathes new life into this Korean classic.
The year is 1951. Twenty-year-old wallflower Lee Kyeonga ekes out a living at the US military Post Exchange where goods and services of varying stripes are available for purchase. She peddles hand-painted portraits on silk handkerchiefs to soldiers passing through. When a handsome, young northern escapee and erstwhile fine artist is hired despite waning demand, an unlikely friendship blossoms into a young woman’s first brush with desire against the backdrop of the Korean War at its most devastating.
Gendry-Kim brings a masterpiece of world literature to life with bold, expressive lines that capture a denuded landscape brutally forced into transition and the people who must find their way back to each other within it. The Naked Tree is exquisitely translated by award-winning expert Janet Hong.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This adaptation by Eisner Award winner Gendry-Kim (The Waiting) of a seminal Korean novel by Park Wan-Suh possesses a rare power. Twenty-year-old Lee Kyeonga navigates 1950s Seoul, which is under siege by the North Korean army. Cynical and guarded, she lives with her mother and works at the Post Exchange, where she butters up American GIs so they'll buy portraits of themselves painted on handkerchiefs. Gendry-Kim breathes life into this milieu in just a handful of striking panels, as Kyeonga convinces a vain saleswoman to write love letters in English to her American beau, develops an uncomfortable crush on a married portrait painter, and reels from an encounter with a GI who promises to "liberate" her in his hotel room. These fraught episodic vignettes are weighted by Kyeonga's desperation to free herself from guilt and grief over the deaths of her two brothers in a bombing. "How could the Gods be so cruel?" Kyeonga recalls her mother crying out, "How could they take both my boys and leave only the girl behind?" Gendry-Kim brings this trauma full-force to her pages in bold, brushy inkwork, proving yet again that she's an essential voice in global comics. It's a masterful and devastating portrait of the lasting cruelties of wartime.
