Mater 2-10

shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024
Hwang Sok-yong (trans. Sora Kim-Russell, Youngjae Josephine Bae)

‘Undoubtedly the most powerful voice in Asia today.’

Nobel Prize–winner Kenzaburo Oe

‘This nearly 500-page novel opens with a laid-off railroad worker in Seoul camped out on a platform atop a factory chimney, where he will stay for 410 consecutive days in protest. As he braves the elements, his ancestors, also railroad workers, visit to relive the murders, imprisonment and torture they endured under Japanese and US occupation while fighting for better working conditions. The Nobel Prize in literature almost always goes to a European, but for the next one that’s awarded to a non-European, I’m rooting for Hwang Sok-yong, perhaps South Korea’s most renowned author.’

Leland Cheuk, book critic and author of the No Good Very Bad Asian

View all reviews

‘Bittersweet and darkly comic … richly rewarding read … This is a novel that shines a light on what it means to be an industrial worker in Korea and to wrestle with the issues of worker exploitation, international tension, and a still-divided nation.’

Driftless Area Review

‘[A]n absorbing look at an intriguing period of Korean history.’

Tony's Reading List

‘Epic.’

Pile by the Bed

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:

‘As one of the country’s most prominent novelists, Hwang has never shied away from controversy … With Familiar Things, Hwang turns his attention to the underside of South Korea’s remarkable economic development, namely, the vast underclass it has created.’

Boston Review

Praise for Familiar Things:

‘Sora Kim-Russell’s translation moves gracefully between gritty, whiffy realism and folk-tale spookiness.’

The Economist

Praise for Familiar Things:

‘Hwang Sok-yong is one of South Korea’s foremost writers, a powerful voice for society’s marginalised.’

Deborah Smith, translator of The Vegetarian

Praise for At Dusk:

‘It’s a regretful, bittersweet exploration of modernisation, which picks away at the country’s past and present, slowly becoming a moving reflection of what we gain and lose as individuals and a society in the name of progress … [Hwang’s] writing is laced with the hard-won wisdom of a man with plenty left to say.’

Ben East, The Observer

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

A Guardian Book of the Day — ‘A masterpiece of Korean history.’

Maya Jaggi, The Guardian

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

International Booker–nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story — an epic tale that threads together a century of Korean history.

In contemporary Seoul, a laid-off worker stages a months-long sit-in atop a sixteen-storey factory chimney. During the long and lonely nights, he talks to his ancestors, chewing on the meaning of life, on wisdom passed down the generations.

Through the lives of those ancestors, three generations of railroad workers, Mater 2-10 vividly portrays the struggles of ordinary Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. It is at once a gripping account of a nation’s longing to be free from oppression, a lyrical folktale that reflects the blood, sweat, and tears shed by modern industrial labourers, and a culmination of Hwang’s career — a masterpiece thirty years in the making.

A true voice of a generation, Hwang shows again why he is unmatched when it comes to depicting the roots and reality of a divided nation and bringing to life the trials and tribulations of the Korean people.

‘Undoubtedly the most powerful voice in Asia today.’

Nobel Prize–winner Kenzaburo Oe

Leland Cheuk, book critic and author of the No Good Very Bad Asian

View all reviews

Driftless Area Review

‘[A]n absorbing look at an intriguing period of Korean history.’

Tony's Reading List

‘Epic.’

Pile by the Bed

Praise for Familiar Things:

The Guardian

Praise for Familiar Things:

Boston Review

Praise for Familiar Things:

‘Sora Kim-Russell’s translation moves gracefully between gritty, whiffy realism and folk-tale spookiness.’

The Economist

Praise for Familiar Things:

‘Hwang Sok-yong is one of South Korea’s foremost writers, a powerful voice for society’s marginalised.’

Deborah Smith, translator of The Vegetarian

Praise for At Dusk:

Ben East, The Observer

Praise for At Dusk:

Kirkus Reviews, starred review

BUY EBOOK

Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 234mm × 153mm

Extent:486pp

ISBN (13):9781922310965

RRP:$35.00

Pub date:30 May 2023

Rights Held: World English

High-res cover:Download Image

AWARDS

2024 The International Booker Prize - Short-listed

CATEGORIES / tags

AUTHOR

Hwang Sok-yong

Hwang Sok-yong was born in 1943 and is arguably Korea’s most renowned author. In 1993, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for an unauthorised trip to the North to promote exchange between artists in the two Koreas. Five years later, he was released on a special pardon by the new president. The recipient of Korea’s highest literary prizes, he has been shortlisted for the Prix Femina Etranger and was awarded the Emile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature for his book At Dusk. His novels and short stories are published in North and South Korea, Japan, China, France, Germany, and the United States. Previous novels include The Ancient Garden, The Story of Mister Han, The Guest, and The Shadow of Arms.

TRANSLATORS

Sora Kim-Russell

Sora Kim-Russell has translated numerous works of Korean fiction, including Hwang Sok-yong’s Princess Bari (Garnet Publishing, 2015), Familiar Things (Scribe, 2017), and At Dusk (Scribe, 2018), which was longlisted for the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.

Youngjae Josephine Bae

Winner of the 2019 LTI Korea Award for Aspiring Translators and the 2021 Korea Times Modern Korean Literature Translation Award, Youngjae Josephine Bae’s translations include Imaginary Athens: urban space and memory in Berlin, Tokyo, and Seoul (Routledge, 2020) and A Global History of Ginseng: imperialism, modernity, and orientalism (Routledge, 2022).

Princess Bari

Hwang Sok-yong

RRP: $27.99 Pub date: 27 May 2015 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Familiar Things

Hwang Sok-yong

RRP: $27.99 Pub date: 15 May 2017 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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At Dusk

Hwang Sok-yong

RRP: $27.99 Pub date: 1 Oct 2018 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Thunderhead

Miranda Darling

RRP: $29.99 Pub date: 3 Apr 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Vladivostok Circus

Elisa Shua Dusapin

RRP: $27.99 Pub date: 3 Apr 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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The Extinction of Irena Rey

Jennifer Croft

RRP: $35.00 Pub date: 27 Feb 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Between a Wolf and a Dog

Georgia Blain

RRP: $24.99 Pub date: 9 Jan 2024 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Bird Life

Anna Smaill

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Juja

Nino Haratischvili

RRP: $32.99 Pub date: 31 Oct 2023 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Gunflower

Laura Jean McKay

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Sisters in Arms

Shida Bazyar

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Can’t I Go Instead

Lee Geum-yi

RRP: $32.99 Pub date: 29 Aug 2023 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Pink Slime

Fernanda Trías

RRP: $29.99 Pub date: 1 Aug 2023 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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West Girls

Laura Elizabeth Woollett

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Birth Canal

Dias Novita Wuri

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No Season but the Summer

Matilda Leyser

RRP: $39.99 Pub date: 4 Jul 2023 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Naked Ambition

Robert Gott

RRP: $29.99 Pub date: 2 May 2023 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Owlish

Dorothy Tse

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What I’d Rather Not Think About

Jente Posthuma

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Blue Hunger

Viola Di Grado

RRP: $27.99 Pub date: 28 Feb 2023 Category: Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) Cover view

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Cursed Bunny

Bora Chung

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Mater 2-10

shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024 Hwang Sok-yong (trans. Sora Kim-Russell, Youngjae Josephine Bae)

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shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024
Hwang Sok-yong (trans. Sora Kim-Russell, Youngjae Josephine Bae)