Ten Thousand Lives: Maninbo, Volumes 1-10

Ko Un grew up in a formerly Japanese-controlled territory that was very much the center of the Korean War. Ten Thousand Lives is his major, ongoing work, which began during his imprisonment, when he determined to describe every person he had ever met. The selection in this volume—from the first 10 volumes—represents one of the major classics of twentieth-century Korean literature, published for the first time in English.