Welcome back to Book Break! In this video I'm gonna be recommending a bunch of amazing
Korean books, and as always I love hearing your recommendations, so do leave in the comments below
any suggestions that I missed out of this video. Emma from the future here - a quick
little note to say that most of these books list the author's name in the western order,
so I'm going to put some text on screen for all of them so you can see the name in the correct Korean
order as well. Most of the books on this list are translated from Korean but I did actually want to
start with an English language one that is by a Korean American author, because it's very much
about exploring her Korean identity, and that is Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner. This
is a memoir that is all about grief and also all about Korean cooking. The book is about
how she coped with the death of her mother and how she reconnected with memories of her mother
through food and cooking, specifically through Korean food, which also helped her reconnect to
that side of her identity. Michelle Zauner is also the front woman of the band Japanese Breakfast,
so the book is very much also infused with music and sound. Moving on to some translated books.
The Investigation by J.M. Lee is a historical fiction book set in 1944 in a prisoner of war
camp, where a guard is found brutally murdered. Another guard is ordered to investigate this,
and he ends up uncovering a whole other story than what appeared on the surface.
So unsurprisingly with that setting it's a very dark book, it's a very sad book, but it's also a
really gripping mystery. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo has been such a huge bestseller.
It's a book about mental health and one woman's struggle against constant misogyny, both systemic
and also from within her own family. And so many people relate to so many of the issues in here,
so Kim Jiyoung is a kind of Korean equivalent of the name Jane Doe, showing this is supposed to be
a really really relatable character. Please Look After Mother by Kyung Sook Shin is about a woman,
a wife and a mother, who has lived this life of constant compromise and sacrifice, and after
suffering a stroke she is left often becoming a bit lost and confused. And so while traveling to
visit her children in the city one day she becomes separated from her husband. So in the book we
watch her family search the streets for her, all the while reminiscing about her life and coming to
terms with some of the really complicated emotions - resentment, guilt, exasperation - that all
exist within family love. The Vegetarian by Han Kang is a short and really quite disturbing book.
So this is about a woman who wakes up from a violent dream and decides to stop eating meat:
a decision that is not met with support from her family. And the whole book is narrated from other
people's perspectives. So we hear first from her husband, then her brother-in-law, then her sister,
and she's painted so differently in each of these sections. She always stands in for what the other
people need her to be, but throughout all of this we just see her mental health continue to spiral.
It's a pretty intense book. Almond by Sohn Won-pyung is about a boy called Yunji who
was born with a brain condition that makes it really hard for him to feel emotions
like anger and fear. And after a random act of violence turns his world completely upside down,
he just retreats inside himself. A new boy who then starts at his school begins to bully him,
but in the book we see this very unlikely friendship spring up between these two very
troubled (in different ways) boys. All right going back to some English language ones.
Shelter by Jung Yun also begins with a random act of violence. It's quite a disturbing opening
so this is about a man called Kyung whose parents always gave him every advantage in life,
but never showed him any kindness. But after a brutal attack they are left unable to live on
their own so the book is about the aftermath of this violent event that brings the family
living together under one roof for the first time in years, and all of the memories and resentments
that come bubbling to the surface. If I Had Your Face by Frances Cha is a pretty searing critique
of social hierarchies and particularly of beauty standards in South Korea, where the
rates of plastic surgery are extraordinarily high. There are a range of main characters in here. We
follow a few different women from very different backgrounds, with very different experiences,
each facing very different struggles. And then Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is a historical fiction
epic which follows several generations of a Korean family living in Japan, and it is absolutely
heartbreaking, I cried loads at this one. There is a huge cast of characters that you really get
to fall in love with, and suffer along with them through all of their hopes and their heartaches.
It also covers a really interesting period of Korean and Japanese history. Before I finish up
I will give you a heads up of a book to look out for coming next year, and that is Concerning My
Daughter by Kim Hye-jin. This has already been a bestseller in Korea so definitely keep your eyes
out for this one. The book is about a mother whose 30-something daughter moves in with her,
but the mother is unprepared and unwilling to accept her daughter's girlfriend,
unwilling to understand the definition of family that her daughter has created. But then
in a parallel story at the mother's workplace, she has to fight to defend
a dementia patient who is treated differently because of having chosen an untraditional
life. So it sounds absolutely amazing, I cannot wait for that one. For more videos like this where
we travel the world in books, I will link to a playlist here of all of those videos. And as I
said at the beginning I would absolutely love to hear your recommendations for your favourite
Korean books that you have read, so do leave a comment below and I'll see you next time.