Read Around Asia Challenge
Read at least one book by an author from each country in Asia.
Best books from Asia (1977)
1611.
Country: Asia / 
South Korea
South Korea
Description:
Winner of the Munhakdongne Novel Award, South Korea's most prestigious literary prize. Cabinet 13 looks exactly like any normal filing cabinet…Except this cabinet is filled with files on the ‘symptomers’, humans whose strange abilities and bizarre experiences might just mark the emergence of a new species. But to Mr Kong, the harried office worker whose job it is to look after the cabinet, the symptomers are a headache; especially the one who won’t stop calling every day, asking to be turned into a cat. A richly funny and fantastical novel about the strangeness at the heart of even the most ev... continue
1612.
Shoko's Smile : Stories by Choi Eunyoung EN
Country: Asia / South Korea
South Korea
Description:
A bestselling and award-winning debut collection from one of South Korea's most prominent young writers. In crisp, unembellished prose, Eun-young Choi paints intimate portraits of the lives of young women in South Korea, balancing the personal with the political. In the title story, a fraught friendship between an exchange student and her host sister follows them from adolescence to adulthood. In "A Song from Afar," a young woman grapples with the death of her lover, traveling to Russia to search for information about the deceased. In "Secret," the parents of a teacher killed in the Sewol ferr... continue
1613.
Please Look After Mom by Kyŏng-suk Sin EN
Country: Asia / South Korea
South Korea
Description:
Follows the efforts of a family to find the mother who went missing from Seoul Station and their sobering realizations when they recall memories that suggest she may not have been happy.
1614.
Perros / Dog Days by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim ES
Country: Asia / South Korea
South Korea
Description:
Un cómic íntimo y revelador sobre la esencia de la familia y la necesidad de crear vínculos, por la multigalardonada autora de Hierba y La espera, con más de 50.000 ejemplares vendidos en España. ***IMPRESCINDIBLE PARA LOS AMANTES DE LOS PERROS*** «Un arte poderoso, de trazo salvaje y negros muy densos». New York Times Book Review En el centro de esta historia hay una mujer que nunca consideró traer un perro a casa. Pero su marido, triste por la muerte de su abuela, con la que le unían fuertes lazos desde la infancia, insiste y acaban teniendo uno. Es el primer paso para un cambio en la vida d... continue
1615.
Grass by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim EN
Country: Asia / South Korea
South Korea
Description:
This true story of a Korean comfort woman documents how the atrocity of war devastates women’s lives Grass is a powerful antiwar graphic novel, telling the life story of a Korean girl named Okseon Lee who was forced into sexual slavery for the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War—a disputed chapter in twentieth-century Asian history. Beginning in Lee’s childhood, Grass shows the lead-up to the war from a child’s vulnerable perspective, detailing how one person experienced the Japanese occupation and the widespread suffering it entailed for ordinary Koreans. Keum Suk Gendry-Kim em... continue
1616.
Country: Asia / South Korea
South Korea
Description:
During the Pacific War, more than 200,000 Korean girls were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese soldiers. They lived in horrific conditions in “comfort stations” across Japanese-occupied territories. Barely 10 percent survived to return to Korea, where they lived as social outcasts. Since then, self-declared comfort women have come forward only to have their testimonies and calls for compensation largely denied by the Japanese government. Kim Soom tells the story of a woman who was kidnapped at the age of thirteen while gathering snails for her starving family. The horrors of her life as... continue
1617.
The Hole : A Novel by Hye-young Pyun EN
Country: Asia / South Korea
South Korea
Description:
Winner of the 2017 Shirley Jackson Award Named One of the Top 10 Thrillers to Read This Summer by Time Magazine. In this tense, gripping novel by a rising star of Korean literature, Oghi has woken from a coma after causing a devastating car accident that took his wife's life and left him paralyzed and badly disfigured. His caretaker is his mother-in-law, a widow grieving the loss of her only child. Oghi is neglected and left alone in his bed. His world shrinks to the room he lies in and his memories of his troubled relationship with his wife, a sensitive, intelligent woman who found all of her... continue
1618.
Bluebeard's First Wife by Seong-nan Ha EN
Country: Asia / South Korea
South Korea
Description:
Ha looks closely at the sordid underbelly of suburbia in Bluebeard's First Wife, the latest from one of Korea's preeminent authors.
1619.
The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down by Haemin Sunim EN
Country: Asia / South Korea
South Korea
Description:
In this guide to mindfulness, Haemin Sunim, a Buddhist monk born in Korea and educated in the United States, offers advice on everything from handling setbacks to dealing with rest and relationships
1620.
Years and Years by Jungeun Hwang EN
Country: Asia / South Korea
South Korea
Description:
Three women--the old mother and her two daughters--contemplate their family life and their bottled-up feelings through the novel's placating yet oddly unnerving prose. Every Year is divided into four large chapters; the first unravels from the perspective of Sejin, younger daughter, the second from that of Youngjin, older daughter, the third from the mother's, and the fourth, back to Sejin's. Throughout the course of the novel, a number of themes are developed, including its discussion of interracial marriage, different forms of family, and sexual minorities. Circumstances and history forced t... continue