Author Description

From Publishers Weekly The seven works of short fiction that form this potent English-language debut by a South Korean introduce a people dislocated physically, politically and psychologically by civil war. The child narrator of "The Rainy Spell" understands little of Communism or revolution, but receives a painful education in loyalty, betrayal, love and grief as political differences within his family culminate in the death of a relative. Fears of treachery and turbulence linger after war has ended, as the landlord in title is correct/pk "The Man Who Was Left as Nine Pairs of Shoes" is asked by a policeman to monitor a tenant and report his activities "when he does something a little out of the ordinary." Even the self becomes a stranger, an object of suspicion: in "Gang Beating" characters file past a mirror in which "you would unexpectedly find your other self... who would look larger or even fatter than you or grotesquely uglier." Occasional leadenness afflicts the style ("Rain enveloped the pitch darkness like a dripping-wet mop"); on the whole, however, the language is wrenching in its plainness. Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.