Virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story - an epic, multi-generational tale that threads together a century of Korean history.
Centred on a family of rail workers, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of workers and common folk, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century, rendering in elegant prose a history of modern Korea. A true voice of a generation, Hwang shows again why he is unmatched when it comes to depicting the grief of a divided nation and bringing to life the cultural identity and trials and tribulations of the Korean people.
Mater 2-10 moves like a locomotive, demonstrating both Hwang Sok-yong's powers as a writer and the beauty of the long novel. The plot centres on three generations of rail workers and Yi Jino, a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in. Perched on the catwalk of a sixteen-storey-high factory chimney during long and bitterly cold nights, Jino talks to his ancestors and friends, chewing on the meaning of life, on wisdom passed down through generations.
Mater 2-10 is a stunning achievement. It is at once a powerful account that captures a nation's longing for a rail line that would connect North and South, a magical-realist novel that manages to reflect the lives of modern industrial workers, and a culmination of Hwang's career - a masterpiece thirty years in the making.
Praise for Familiar Things-
'A powerful examination of capitalism from one of South Korea's most acclaimed authors ... Hwang challenges us to look back and reevaluate the cost of modernisation, and see what and whom we have left behind.'
-The Guardian
Praise for Familiar Things-
'Hwang Sok-yong is one of South Korea's foremost writers, a powerful voice for society's marginalised, and Sora Kim-Russell's translations never falter.'
-Deborah Smith, translator of The Vegetarian
Praise for At Dusk-
'Having been imprisoned for political reasons, Hwang has a restrained, delicate touch, alive to the nuances of memory, the slipperiness of the past, and the difficult choices life forces us to make ... Subtly political, deeply humane, a story about home, loss, and the cost of a country's advancement.'
-Kirkus Reviews, starred review
