The Mookse and the Gripes discussion

"Honford Star's mission is to publish the best literature from East Asia, be it classic or contemporary. We believe there are many important East Asian authors and books yet to be read by English-language readers, so we aim to make these works as accessible as possible. By working with talented translators and exciting local artists, we hope to see more bookshelves containing beautiful editions of the East Asian literature we love.

Our first book was a collection of short stories by the famed Korean author, Kim Tongin. Despite the fact his work revolutionized modern Korean fiction, this was the first volume of his influential writings in English. Other Honford Star titles include the complete fiction of Lōa Hô, known as the "father of Taiwanese literature", Lee Hyo-seok's novel of an interracial marriage set in 1940s Korea, and the complete short fiction of Kang Kyeong-ae, a Korean revolutionary socialist during the Japanese occupation era."

Increasingly one of my favourite presses not least as they specialise in Korean literature. They'd published 6 books from Korea so far all of which I've read:

They started, as their self-introduction suggests, with classic Korean literature from the 1st half of the 20th century:

Sweet Potato: Collected Short Stories by Kim Tongin, translated by Grace Jung:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


Endless Blue Sky by Lee Hyoseok, translated by Steven Capener:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


The Underground Village by Kang Kyeong-ae, translated by Anton Hur
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


But for 2021, their K-lit focus has turned to the contemporary, in terms of authors, and the future in terms of subject matter.

Tower, translated by Sang Ryu from the original 타워 by 배명훈 (Bae Myung-hoon) - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


Cursed Bunny translated by Anton Hur from 저주토끼 by 정보라 (Bora Chung) - https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


To the Warm Horizon translated by Soje from 해가 지는 곳으로 by 최진영 (Jin-Young Choi) -
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


As a recommendation - if someone wants one - Tower and Cursed Bunny are my two favourites.

Their three other books to date have been:

Scales of Injustice. The Complete Fiction of Loā Hô. from the "father of Taiwanese literature"


Hunter School also from Taiwan


Astral Season, Beastly Season a debut novel from Japan

Honford Star’s mission statement refers to talented local artists, and the cover work is alway stunning. See here for the press's general approach: https://booksandbao.com/asian-cover-a....

It is also great to see the translators named on the front cover, and the Korean title and author’s name, written in their original form i.e. 한글 (hangeul) on the flaps.

Have your read The Accusation: Forbidden Stories from Inside North Korea or Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite about life in N Korea?

No although I did read Friend which was interesting as that was a state sanctioned novel from North Korea.

http://cup.columbia.edu/book/friend/9...

I though there had been no novels published in decades that weren’t about the “dear leader.”

That is what is interesting about it as it definitely isn’t that, albeit elements of heroic tractor workers meeting their production quotas.

I noticed it was published after the death of Kim Jong-Il.
The Accusation was interesting and heartbreaking. I’m sure you know it was smuggled out of N Korea.

Paul, is Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung available to buy yet anywhere?

From the publisher yes - https://www.honfordstar.com/cursed-bunny

It isn't technically published until 15 July but they send out copies in advance for pre-orders

But it therefore won't be available elsewhere yet

Oh well then I’ll preorder! It’s calling to me.

Paul, thanks for bringing this press to my attention. I was excited to find some of their books available through Hoopla. Tonight I read Astral Season, Beastly Season by Tahi Saihate, trans. from the Japanese by Kalau Almony.

It felt very much like a modern day descendent of Ryū Murakami's & Chuck Palahniuk's books.

(My review is here.)

Thanks. Looks interesting. I have been a bit nationalistic in my reading of their books - read all the Korean literature and none of the others.

For those in the Asymptote Book Club, To The Warm Horizon is next month's choice

Yay!

Cursed Bunny just came in the mail today and I glanced at the first page. Looks like a wild ride ahead.

I’ve been told that a number of short story collections are creepy or disturbing and each time they weren’t as wild as I expected. The first story in Cursed Bunny is absolutely the weirdest, most disturbing story I’ve ever read!

David wrote: "Cursed Bunny just came in the mail today and I glanced at the first page. Looks like a wild ride ahead."

Did I say Cursed Bunny is Mandatory reading?? The tone of the stories do change and take a fairy tale quality

The first story is one of the (many) highlights

I think you did, Robert. A rave review from you translates to mandatory reading for me. When I say weird and disturbing I mean that in a good way!

Is anyone familiar with an anticipated book written by a Korean woman coming out in the US in December? I am not sure about the UK release date. I forgot to note the author/title/translator and promptly forgot all when I went to order it. I am not sure it would be a Honford Star release but figured I would ask here since it was a Korean woman author.

Paul keeps up with Korean literature. He’ll probably know.

Bit hard to pin down from that info.

This is the best place for coming-soon Korean literature in translation:

https://londonkoreanlinks.net/books/l...

(Dates there do tends to be UK dates of applicable as Philip Gowman who complies it is a south-west Londoner like me)

But not seeing any December releases from female authors.

Thanks Paul, I may have been thinking about Violets. I'll know in December when whatever I saw is released.

Other good source is Barbara Zitwer’s agency as she seems to dominate the Korean literature in translation market particularly (but not exclusively) at the more popular end

https://bjz.squarespace.com/home

Also the Smoking Tigers translators collective who represent a decent slice of the translation output

https://smokingtigers.com

WndyJW wrote: "I’ve been told that a number of short story collections are creepy or disturbing and each time they weren’t as wild as I expected. The first story in Cursed Bunny is absolutely the weirdest, most d..."

I can report that the first story is not the most disturbing story in the collection..

Oh no. I’ve only read the first two. I’ll read some more tonight.
Have you read other short stories as disturbing as these, David?

WndyJW wrote: "Oh no. I’ve only read the first two. I’ll read some more tonight.
Have you read other short stories as disturbing as these, David?"

Nothing comes to mind. The Snare is particularly disturbing.

It is quite something isn’t it. Will be disappointed if this instant on the International Booker list. Oddly with all the wonderful elements I think I most enjoyed the Konglish Shakespeare in one of the stories.

David wrote: "Nothing comes to mind. The Snare is particularly..."

I started reading Cursed Bunny the other day. I was fine w/ the stories until I read the first few sentences of Snare. I just don't even want to see where that goes.... Unfortunately, that consigns the book to the abandoned pile for me.

Maybe my reading is a bit more to the extreme as I didn’t find this particularly off the scale. I remember one of the books the year we judged the RoC for example. I was also invited to join a Goodreads group recently where I suspect the Cursed Bunny would be banned for tameness.

That was the Bizarro one, wasn’t it? I was amazed on discovering a whole new category of fiction I never heard of.

Yes that one.

This is one of those books that keeps popping up for me (either the cover image or mentioned in comments in various online platforms). It's like I'm being beckoned to it... Hello Flame, I am Moth.

Now I have to jump right to Snare.

I’ve been watching The Squid Game on netflix with what seems like everyone else in the world. It’s interesting how the themes and sensibility overlap with Cursed Bunny - critiques on capitalism and democracy, viscerally jarring images.

I haven’t got round to that yet (not sure I ever will as I don’t really watch much TV). Although my wife confirms the games are ones she used to play (without the shooting of course).

I’ve heard, I don’t remember where now, that The Squid Game is not translated well; for instance, a main character says, “I’m not very smart,” in English, but in Korean she said, “I’m not well educated,” which the critic said is a popular trope in Korea: the smart person who is too poor for college.
The person criticizing the translation had a few examples of one word or a short phrase changing the meaning of a sentence or, worse, the nature of the character.

I didn’t watch it, my husband did though.

I think that’s a problem with the dubbing, Wendy. The subtitles are independently translated.

So they are less scrupulous about dubbing than translations? That doesn’t seem fair to Korean script writers.

Paul, you and your wife should watch one episode and tell us what you think.

It’s a common issue with non-English shows or films. The dubbing is often a poor translation while the subtitles are typically better.

I wonder why, it’s not done in real time, there should be time to get it right.

Subtitles are a lot easier to get right and is similar to translating fiction - you just hire a good translator. Dubbing, on the other hand, is much more expensive. The dubbing script needs the syllables to match what the characters are saying, otherwise the whole thing will be out of sync. It’s a very expensive and time consuming process to create a quality dubbing script. And then you need more time and money to record it. Given the time and budgetary restraints of most streaming content, the subtitles are often much better.

Plus who listens to the dubbed version except for the LOLs?

That explains it. Thanks, David!

David wrote: "Subtitles are a lot easier to get right and is similar to translating fiction - you just hire a good translator. Dubbing, on the other hand, is much more expensive. The dubbing script needs the syl..."

I hate dubbing - One of the worst ones I've encountered is Fellini's Amaracord - THE WHOLE THING is out of sync. I mean mouths are closed and you can still hear words.

As for best I guess the Miyazaki films are pretty good but then the dubbing doesn't match the subtitles

Honford Star has a sale on e-books for £1.99 just today.

Exciting news - two new books due out and both are translations from Korean. What more could anyone want.

https://www.honfordstar.com/the-age-o...

This is a story collection by a famous (deceased) Korean author and translated by a team of translators (many from the Smoking Tigers including Anton “Cursed Bunny” Hur)

https://www.honfordstar.com/shop/laun...

From the author of the wonderful Tower but this time from a debut translator.

Anton Hur said on our Zoom call he was working on something exciting - this was it.

I saw that on their website, I'm really looking forward to the short stories. Would be great if someone released Land in English, there's a German translation available but not aware of any others. I have Tower but haven't had time to read it yet. But there was a lot I liked about Ninth Building

I have, and have read, an English translation of the first volume (c600 pages) by Agnita Tennant.

There also seems to be a c1200 page version available which includes all three volumes.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/land...

Thanks, isn't it out of print though? It's not actually available at Waterstones and I have an alert for it set up at Blackwell's and there's been no sign of it so far.