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The Book of Masks
Book by Hwang, Sun-Won
- GenresShort Stories
200 pages, Hardcover
First published August 1, 1989
4 people are currently reading
93 people want to read
About the author
Hwang Sun-won
22 books19 followersSee: 황순원
Hwang Sun-wŏn was a Korean short story writer, novelist, and poet.
Hwang Sun-wŏn was a Korean short story writer, novelist, and poet.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 11, 2019
หน้ากาก โดยหวาง ซุนวอน (เขียน) ไกรวรรณ สีดาฟอง (แปล)
เป็นหนังสือรวมเรื่องส้นของนักเขียนชื่อดังชาวเกาหลี ที่ตีพิมพ์รวมเล่มในปี 1976
บางเรื่องติดเรทนิดๆ หลายเรื่องเป็นแนวการต่อสู้ของชีวิต มันเป็นภาพเกาหลีที่แร้งแค้นในชนบท หรือไม่ก็เป็นคนชายขอบในเมืองใหญ่ ไม่มีภาพหวานแหววโรแมนติคแบบซีรียส์ในปัจจุบัน
แต่ละเรื่องเนื้อหาไม่ยาว แต่เน้นบรรยายพรรณา รู้สึกเนื้อหาอืดๆ มีการหักมุมบ้างนิดหน่อยแต่ไม่กระแทกแรง
เนื้อหาในเล่มคงอาจสะท้อนเกาหลีเมื่อครั้งหนึ่งในอดีต
เป็นหนังสือรวมเรื่องส้นของนักเขียนชื่อดังชาวเกาหลี ที่ตีพิมพ์รวมเล่มในปี 1976
บางเรื่องติดเรทนิดๆ หลายเรื่องเป็นแนวการต่อสู้ของชีวิต มันเป็นภาพเกาหลีที่แร้งแค้นในชนบท หรือไม่ก็เป็นคนชายขอบในเมืองใหญ่ ไม่มีภาพหวานแหววโรแมนติคแบบซีรียส์ในปัจจุบัน
แต่ละเรื่องเนื้อหาไม่ยาว แต่เน้นบรรยายพรรณา รู้สึกเนื้อหาอืดๆ มีการหักมุมบ้างนิดหน่อยแต่ไม่กระแทกแรง
เนื้อหาในเล่มคงอาจสะท้อนเกาหลีเมื่อครั้งหนึ่งในอดีต
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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January 29, 2020I can't review this book meaningfully. Sometimes I am reminded that my literary tastes are not all that sophisticated. I enjoyed this collection of stories, some of them more than others, and am glad I read it, even though several times I scratched my head and wondered if I had actually missed something, or if there was maybe nothing to miss.
May 2, 2024
Raw and human. I've never taken to the short story form much, but this collection changed my mind. It's a lot more profound when you understand the context that Hwang was writing in. Colonisation, dictatorships, partitions - Indian readers know a thing or two about these. Which makes Hwang's work strangely familiar.
February 18, 2024
Hwang Sun-won, "The Book of Masks." Holman Martin, translator. Readers International, 1980/1989.
Hwang Sun-won was a South Korean writer, and the stories in this volume are set generally after WWII in South Korea. There are a few historical markers–WWII, the Korean War, the 1960 April Rebellion–but the stories are not particularly political. Rather, Hwang’s character live and suffer in the world as given with little if any sense that the world could be changed for the better. As a result, the characters in the stories are just kind of stuck in the circumstances in which they find themselves..
There are a few stories in the volume that I liked very much.
“Masks”is a war story, a parable about death and reincarnation that would be worthy of Ovid. Through an agricultural logic, the blood of the victim in a fight between two enemy soldiers seeps into the ground to be reborn in a variety of ways, while also seeping up the phylogenetic scale to redeem his killer, who, while not dead, still suffered greatly because of the war.
“Weighted Tumblers” is the best story in the volume. The story is of an old man–a good, empathetic person–who is barely making his way through the world. He lost his son, his only family, in the war. Yet, rather than just exist in solitude, the old man reaches out. He makes a toy tumbler for a four year old neighbor boy who is a polio victim and is left home alone by his mother during the day while she goes to work. The tumbler becomes an important metaphor in the story. The man repairs heated grates, from which he barely makes a living. One day, on a job he sees the woman who was the wife of his son and had disappeared long ago, making off with the son’s military medal and his pension, leaving the old man with nothing. At the sight of her he flees, but she seeks him out, returns the medal and the pension, and explains that after a very hard life she has remarried and is doing better. The old man has the epiphany that he and his daughter-in-law too are weighted tumblers bouncing back up again and again after being hit and cast about by life.
In “For Dear Life,” a student involved in the 1960 April Revolution ran away after the person next to him was shot and killed. Later in the day, the student was shot in the leg and was saved by a woman who took him to the hospital. The protagonist sees himself as a coward, yet after he gets out of the hospital he searches out the woman, not so much to thank her but to find out why she risked her life, given that he didn’t risk his life for a fellow protestor. She is a prostitute and not altruistic but thought that she snagged a customer and only took him to the hospital once she realized how badly he was injured. On the street later when the protagonist is mistaken for a thief, the narrator fights back. Hwang raises the question whether the protagonist Is he brave now that he is willing to fight, or does his cowardice force him into the desperate move of fighting? Hwang leaves indeterminate whether the protagonist’s experience of the woman who saved him changed him or not.
Finally, “Shadows of a Sound” is a story about memory and art. In a small town, two boys are stand-in Church bellringers, and an event occurred which both bound and separated them. Because someone has messed with the bell, they have to climb up a ladder to fix it. Part way up the ladder, they witness the result of a much larger male dog having sex with a much smaller bitch, which sets them to laughing, which upsets the priest, who moves the ladder. One boy, the narrator, gets down with only bruises and scrapes, while the other falls and is so injured that he suffers from a hunchback for the rest of his life. The boys lose contact and don’t see each other again, but forty years on–which is the present moment of the story–the hunchback dies and has had a message sent to the other boy asking him to attend the funeral. Surprised, the narrator does but arrives too late yet learns about his long ago friend’s sad and lonely life. This would be an unremittingly sad story, but the narrator finds a notebook filled with his friend’s art, including an image of the two dogs, which recovers a sense of innocence and joy.
The rest of the stories in this volume are dominated by strange or creepy characters which elicited little interest in or compassion from me.
Hwang Sun-won was a South Korean writer, and the stories in this volume are set generally after WWII in South Korea. There are a few historical markers–WWII, the Korean War, the 1960 April Rebellion–but the stories are not particularly political. Rather, Hwang’s character live and suffer in the world as given with little if any sense that the world could be changed for the better. As a result, the characters in the stories are just kind of stuck in the circumstances in which they find themselves..
There are a few stories in the volume that I liked very much.
“Masks”is a war story, a parable about death and reincarnation that would be worthy of Ovid. Through an agricultural logic, the blood of the victim in a fight between two enemy soldiers seeps into the ground to be reborn in a variety of ways, while also seeping up the phylogenetic scale to redeem his killer, who, while not dead, still suffered greatly because of the war.
“Weighted Tumblers” is the best story in the volume. The story is of an old man–a good, empathetic person–who is barely making his way through the world. He lost his son, his only family, in the war. Yet, rather than just exist in solitude, the old man reaches out. He makes a toy tumbler for a four year old neighbor boy who is a polio victim and is left home alone by his mother during the day while she goes to work. The tumbler becomes an important metaphor in the story. The man repairs heated grates, from which he barely makes a living. One day, on a job he sees the woman who was the wife of his son and had disappeared long ago, making off with the son’s military medal and his pension, leaving the old man with nothing. At the sight of her he flees, but she seeks him out, returns the medal and the pension, and explains that after a very hard life she has remarried and is doing better. The old man has the epiphany that he and his daughter-in-law too are weighted tumblers bouncing back up again and again after being hit and cast about by life.
In “For Dear Life,” a student involved in the 1960 April Revolution ran away after the person next to him was shot and killed. Later in the day, the student was shot in the leg and was saved by a woman who took him to the hospital. The protagonist sees himself as a coward, yet after he gets out of the hospital he searches out the woman, not so much to thank her but to find out why she risked her life, given that he didn’t risk his life for a fellow protestor. She is a prostitute and not altruistic but thought that she snagged a customer and only took him to the hospital once she realized how badly he was injured. On the street later when the protagonist is mistaken for a thief, the narrator fights back. Hwang raises the question whether the protagonist Is he brave now that he is willing to fight, or does his cowardice force him into the desperate move of fighting? Hwang leaves indeterminate whether the protagonist’s experience of the woman who saved him changed him or not.
Finally, “Shadows of a Sound” is a story about memory and art. In a small town, two boys are stand-in Church bellringers, and an event occurred which both bound and separated them. Because someone has messed with the bell, they have to climb up a ladder to fix it. Part way up the ladder, they witness the result of a much larger male dog having sex with a much smaller bitch, which sets them to laughing, which upsets the priest, who moves the ladder. One boy, the narrator, gets down with only bruises and scrapes, while the other falls and is so injured that he suffers from a hunchback for the rest of his life. The boys lose contact and don’t see each other again, but forty years on–which is the present moment of the story–the hunchback dies and has had a message sent to the other boy asking him to attend the funeral. Surprised, the narrator does but arrives too late yet learns about his long ago friend’s sad and lonely life. This would be an unremittingly sad story, but the narrator finds a notebook filled with his friend’s art, including an image of the two dogs, which recovers a sense of innocence and joy.
The rest of the stories in this volume are dominated by strange or creepy characters which elicited little interest in or compassion from me.
November 15, 2021
At times subtle, distilled, complex, poignant, and direct, this short story collection covers a range of styles, themes, and characters--but always with a sense of deep humanity, a face below the mask.
February 2, 2011
Really depressing
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews