Beautifully exploiting split identities and the confusions of nationalism, Dusapin’s pin-sharp dissection of the relationship between North and South Korea as seen through the eyes of a guesthouse receptionist and a French cartoonist is a constant joy.
As if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman – 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, which won the Prix Robert Walser, 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.
Publisher: Daunt Books
ISBN: 9781911547549
Number of pages: 128
A young Korean woman works in a guesthouse where she meets a Frenchman novelist who illustrates books featuring a grove trotting archaeologist. Vividly described. You can sense the chill. Sokcho in the winter is a... More
An out of seasons beach resort in South Korea sees the arrival of a mysterious French graphic novelist. A room cleaner is infatuated by him, her seduction disquieting. The novel reads with a moody, out of focus vibe.... More
Winter in Sokcho was a weird, unsettling read that is still lingering as I try to wrap my thoughts around the musings and behaviours of its narrator, a woman tirelessly existing in a world where she doesn’t quite fit,... More
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