Language of White Bones: The Secrets of Han Kang’s Poetic Prose, by Eun-Gwi Chung Essay [email protected] Thu, 12/05/2024 - 15:23 Photo of Han Kang by Paik Dahuim / Courtesy of Natur & KulturLike a clutch of words strewn over white paper. Seoul, which I had last seen in summer, had frozen. Turning to look behind me, I saw the snow already sifting down to cover those just-made prints. Whitening. —Han Kang, The White Book, trans. Deborah Smith Han Kang, winner of 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, the eighteenth woman, the third Asian, the first Korean to earn the prize: I heard the news while rushing to the funeral of my friend’s father. It was a sad, absurd, beautiful evening. In the morning, I had just finished writing a short essay about Anne Carson, a piece that would be published in the newspaper if she won the Nobel. My phone began to ring. Again and again, it rang constantly. The Swedish Academy announced that the prize was awarded for Han Kang’s “intense poetic prose that confronts historical trauma and reveals the fragility of human life” and her “unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead.” In such an overwhelming moment, it came as no surprise that the Nobel committee specifically recognized her poetic style as an example of experimental innovation in contemporary writing. In fact, her oeuvre does not adhere to the conventional grammar of the novel that lays out the... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2024-12-05 21:23:24 UTC ]
Fathers are often domineering or formative presences in fiction, and the following classic short stories all focus on the important influence of fathers on their children, even though, in at least one of the stories listed here, the father is absent from the story itself. These stories are among... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-06-03 14:00:08 UTC ]
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Thousands of short stories are read each year in order for editors to create Best of anthologies. Here is a look at a few. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-06-01 10:39:00 UTC ]
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Family plays an important part in much fiction, of course, but sometimes the short story form has offered us an insight into family life that the longer novel does not. Because it can only provide us with a few snapshots, or a handful of moments, perhaps even just one episode […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-05-27 14:00:35 UTC ]
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Sisters confront racism with humor, a fantasy novelist delves into short stories, a military history expert salutes the civil rights movement, and a movie star's memoir goes behind the scenes. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2022-05-25 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a prolific novelist, short-story writer, and poet, who is perhaps best-known for classic children’s books like The Jungle Book and for poems like ‘If—’. But Kipling’s short stories for adults often get overlooked – a fact which is perhaps hardly surprising given... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-05-18 14:00:38 UTC ]
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Sometimes in interviews I catch myself speaking of my book of short stories about the Iraq War as though it is a kind of literary journalism. I want people to think about their recent history, imagine the lives of soldiers, and get a sense of what it’s like to go to war. And I do […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-05-17 08:53:40 UTC ]
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Colin Barrett's second collection, 'Homesickness,' expands the reach of this mordantly funny Irishman beyond the small-town millennials of his debut. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2022-05-03 13:00:20 UTC ]
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Very short stories–also known as flash fiction, micro fiction, drabbles, and the like–are a delightful form of fiction. Start with these. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-04-19 10:34:00 UTC ]
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Literature is full of monsters whose names and appearance have passed into general circulation: we all recognise Frankenstein (even if, as pedants will be quick to point out, Hollywood has made us confuse the ‘monster’ with his creator), Dracula, and the Minotaur, among many others. But what are... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-04-13 14:00:46 UTC ]
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If you're in search of more of the best short stories of all time, start with this list to build your to-read list! Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2022-04-05 10:32:00 UTC ]
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One of her country’s first writers to address female sexuality from a woman’s perspective, she produced four novels and dozens of short stories that could be read as political allegories. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2022-04-04 22:13:26 UTC ]
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The 1918 short story ‘Bliss’ is one of the best-known and most widely studied stories by the writer Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923). Although Mansfield never wrote a novel, her short stories helped to redefine the possibilities of the story form. ‘Bliss’ is a story full of ambiguous and... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-04-02 14:00:03 UTC ]
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What are some of the best short stories by female writers? Women have been making their mark on the short story form since the form became popular in the nineteenth century, and many notable female practitioners of the short story, such as Katherine Mansfield and Kate Chopin, were among the […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-03-23 15:00:17 UTC ]
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The inventive and philosophical short stories of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) take in a range of themes. Like many other authors, Borges had a set of preoccupations which he revisited time and again in his fiction, and a number of his stories are variations on the same […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-03-22 15:00:53 UTC ]
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Are you tired of getting your short stories rejected by literary magazines with weird names like Ploughshares, The Paris Review, and, lol, The New Yorker? Do you, a writer of a searing, minimalist narratives of longing and loss amid the ruins of late capitalism, need to eat? Sure you do! Well,... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-03-17 16:16:55 UTC ]
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As women writers adapted to a changing post-WWII job market, so too did they adapt in their work, translating their skills into writing suspense for television and turning short stories into screenplays. In her essay on adaptation and “gendered discourses,” Shelley Cobb writes that “feminist... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2022-02-28 09:50:01 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Statue of renowned Kurdish historian, author, and poet Mastoureh Ardalan (1805–1848) in Erbil / Photo by Levi Meir Clancy / Unsplash Even though they appear to have a lot to say about the historical, political, cultural, and literary... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-23 21:05:41 UTC ]
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As a literary genre, fantasy is one of the oldest and most recent. Although modern fantasy only began to be recognised as a distinct genre in the late twentieth century, thanks largely to the popularity of J. R. R. Tolkien and his imitators, its roots can be traced back millennia. […] Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-02-23 15:00:28 UTC ]
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Although he is probably better known as a poet, Langston Hughes (1902-67), a leading writer of the Harlem Renaissance, also wrote some of the finest short stories of the early twentieth century, and ‘Red-Headed Baby’ is one of his best. ‘Red-Headed Baby’ was published in Hughes’ 1934 collection... Continue reading at Interesting Literature
[ Interesting Literature | 2022-02-22 15:00:01 UTC ]
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Interviews The creative writing of the twenty-first century will be remembered for having sanctioned the passage of text from paper to digital support. But is it really true that the author’s cards have disappeared? And how do contemporary authors write... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2022-02-08 20:43:39 UTC ]
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