Sunset: A Ch'ae Manshik Reader

by Manshik Ch'ae, Bruce Fulton (Translator), Ju-Chan Fulton (Translator)

Overview

Ch’ae Manshik is one of the most accomplished modern Korean writers yet is underrepresented in English translation because of the challenges posed by his distinctive voice and colloquial style. Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik Reader is the first English-language anthology of his works and features a variety of genres—novella, short fiction, anecdotal essay, travel writing, children’s story, one-act play, three-act play, and roundtable discussion.


This anthology moves beyond the usual “representative works” to provide a well-rounded selection of writing by one of Korea’s most innovative and memorable voices, drawing on Ch'ae's ten-volume Complete Works. This edition also provides a comprehensive introduction outlining the limitations of existing approaches to Ch'ae. It contextualizes the anthology's contents both in terms of the author's career and the rich Korean tradition of intertextuality and intermediality that he reflects from the country's earliest times to the new millennium.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231543408
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	06/06/2017
Series:	Weatherhead Books on Asia
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Ch’ae Manshik (1902–1950) published his first story in 1924, at the age of twenty-two, and went on to publish many other works in a variety of genres.

Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton are translators of numerous volumes of modern Korean fiction.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
1. Sunset
2. In Three Directions
3. Ungrateful Wretch
4. Skewered Beef
5. Egg on My Face
6. A Writing Worm's Life
7. Travel Sketches
8. Challenges Facing Today's Writers
9. Yujong and I
10. Whatever Possessed Me? A Play in One Act
11. Juvesenility
12. A Man Called Hungbo
13. My "Flower and Soldier"
14. The Grasshopper, the Kingfisher, and the Ant
15. A Three-Way Conversation on Kungmin Literature
16. Mister Pang
17. Blind Man Shim: A Play in Three Acts
18. Angel for a Day

Editorial Reviews

A remarkable, indispensable addition to the growing English-language canon of modern Korean literature, masterfully selected and translated. Eighteen works by a virtuoso writer of satire give us extraordinary insight into various aspects of the Korean peninsula’s modernity, through Ch’ae’s signature style: darkly humorous and penetrating critique of all things and every viewpoint.

Jin-kyung Lee

Sunset is a seminal work of translation for researchers, teachers, and students who are interested in modern Korean literature. Not only does it introduce English-language readers to an excellent selection of texts that illuminate the complexity and significance of the writings of Ch’ae, one of the most important modern Korean writers, it also sets an example for ensuing endeavors to showcase individual writers of the Korean language.

Serk-Bae Suh

Sunset embraces the sheer diversity of this major author’s oeuvre without shying away from critical questions raised by his literary practice and politics in both the colonial and post-liberation contexts. Spanning genres and literary modes, the volume mirrors the imaginative scope and intertextuality of Ch’ae’s writing and will be of great interest in the classroom and for the general reader of modern literature alike. This is a welcome addition to the expanding catalogue of Korean literature in translation.

Christopher P. Hanscom

Sunset offers a wonderful introduction to the wide variety of writing being published in colonial and postcolonial Korea, all through the lens of the writer Ch’ae Manshik. Ch’ae is best known and loved today for his novels, but here we rediscover him as a man of many talents, whose work managed to cross the lines between popular style and social critique with great success.

Janet Poole

It's fascinating to contemplate the bifurcated Korea of today and consider the insights this anthology offers from the not-too-distant past.

Book Monger Coast Weekend

This volume, with its selections span[s] a variety of forms and genres, presented in colorful and accessible prose by two accomplished veteran translators.

Acta Koreana

[Ch'ae's] diverse works allow readers to experience life in colonial and post-colonial Korea through the lens of various people of different social strata, genders, and occupations.

International Examiner

Sunset shows that there’s more to the writer than the apologetic novellas that appeared after 1945, and that he’s a writer well worth (re)discovering. Anyone wanting to know more about twentieth-century Korean literature, could certainly do worse than starting their journey here.

Tony's Reading List

A valuable introduction to the work of an important Korean writer. . . . Taken together, Sunset illuminates a turbulent and often overcast period in Korean history through the sensibility of a conflicted and yet acutely observant writer.

Korean Quarterly - John Feffer

In the introduction, the editors/translators express the hope that Ch’ae’s greater body of works—outside of the few “representative” works for which he is generally known—will receive more attention. This volume, with its selections spanning a variety of forms and genres, presented in colorful and accessible prose by two accomplished veteran translators, will no doubt contribute to that end.

Acta Koreana - Charles La Shure