Land 토지 1

토지 #1

by Pak Kyongni

제1편 어둠의 발소리
서(序)
1장 서희
2장 한밤의 추적
3장 골짜기의 초롱불
4장 수수께끼
5장 장날
6장 마을 아낙들
7장 상민 윤보와 중인 문 의원
8장 오광대
9장 별당아씨 소식
10장 주막에서 만난 강 포수
11장 개명 양반
12장 꿈 속의 수미산
13장 괴로운 환희
14장 악당과 마녀
15장 첫 논쟁
16장 살아있는 전설
17장 상처입은 울음
18장 악마의 유혹
19장 사자(使者)

제2편 추적과 음모
1장 사라진 여자
2장 윤씨부인의 비밀
3장 실패
4장 나는 아무렇지도 않다

Genres: Fiction

572 pages, Paperback

About the author

Pak Kyongni (December 2, 1926 – May 5, 2008) was a prominent South Korean novelist. She was born in Tongyeong, South Gyeongsang Province, and later lived in Wonju Gangwon Province. Pak made her literary debut in 1955, with Gyesan (계산, Calculations). She is, however, most well known for her 16-volume story Toji (토지, The Land), an epic saga set on the turbulent history of Korea during 19th and 20th century. It was later adapted into a movie, a television series and an opera.

Pak Kyongni died from lung cancer at the age of 81 on May 5, 2008 and many literary men recollected her as a guide for their literary works and life as a writer. She was posthumously awarded the country's top medal by the newly created Culture Ministry of South Korea for her promoting South Korean arts.

Reviews

[Jungsook Chung · Rating 5 out of 5]

Park, Kyungni is my most favorite Korean writer. When I had read 'the Daughters of Pharmacist Kim,' in my youth for the first time out of her works, I liked her novel a lot. Since then, I read most of her books, whenever available, but I had no chance to read twenty volumes of 'Land' because I came to the U.S. before the books were published. It's said that it took 25 years for Park to complete 20 volumes.

When I visited my mother in Korea this year, in October,2018, I found there were 20 complete volumes, Land, at nearby library of my mother's house. I was very excited when I borrowed books with my nephew's library card. I was very tired after taking care of my mother who has a severe dementia, but I kept reading instead of resting while she was sleeping.

The volume 1 starts with novelist, Jisoo Choi's family, living in countryside in the early 20th century just before Korea was ruled by Japan. Japan is preparing colonization of Korea; Japanese grants land to Japanese settlers.

For those who want to know about the books 'Land' more, I copied the book introduction at Amazon.com. and I attached below since I cannot write better than that, and I found nobody wrote a book review of 'Land.'

.... it possesses both the formal dimensions and the high seriousness of epic, is set in a period during which Japan held strong sway over Korea, regulating its business and industry and making arbitrary land grants to Japanese settlers. At the heart of the novel is a series of conflicts between Korean conservatives too enervated to oppose Japan's acquisitive energies and radical native insurgents. Their resistance culminated in the Dong Hak rebellion, a watershed historical event that casts long shadows over the intricately interwoven fates of Kyong-ni's vividly drawn characters--most especially Choi Chisoo, an arrogant, wealthy landowner, hated and envied by his neighbors and servants, and at continual odds with his embittered wife, whose ``failure'' to bear him a son provokes Choi's bitter displeasure and sets in motion a chain of events leading to his downfall. The author employs a kind of Upstairs, Downstairs structure, in which nondescript villagers and assorted second-class citizens observe, comment on, and in some ways parallel the lives of their ``betters.'' Among the most memorable are Pyongsan, an impoverished landowner waiting patiently through half a lifetime to be revenged on the avaricious Choi; the handsome villager Yongi; and the scheming Guinyo, the ambitious housemaid whose plan to rise above her station precipitates chaos, losses, and death, and drives the story to its stunning, tragic conclusion. The energy of melodrama surges through this big novel, yet as a portrait of a culture and a knowing psychological tale of the social and personal consequences of rigidly enforced class differences, it's a work of high literary distinction as well. A much-beloved work in Korea (where it was made into an equally popular television series) that should find many grateful admirers in America as well. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

[Chaery Imm · Rating 5 out of 5]

20권으로 가는 길이 험난할 것으로 생각되었으나
생각보다 흥미진진한 빠른 전개에 단숨에 읽어내렸다