Patterns of the Heart and Other Stories

Korean writer Ch'oe My¿ngik was a lifelong resident of Pyongyang, a city his short stories masterfully evoke in exquisite modernist prose. This book presents a selection of Ch'oe's short fiction in translation.

List of contents

Introduction: A Dislocated Art and Life
Walking in the Rain
A Man of No Character
Spring on the New Road
Patterns of the Heart
Ordinary People
The Barley Hump
The Engineer
Young Kwŏn Tongsu
Voices of the Ancestral Land
Translator’s Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources

About the author

Ch’oe Myŏngik was born in Pyongyang in 1903 and resided in the city all his life. The son of a merchant, he ran a small factory while pursuing fiction writing as a sideline in the 1930s. His writing was acclaimed for its modernism and explorations of a city and its inhabitants in flux. His date of passing is unknown.

Janet Poole is chair and associate professor of East Asian studies and distinguished professor of the humanities at the University of Toronto. She is the translator of Yi T’aejun’s Eastern Sentiments (Columbia, 2009) and Dust and Other Stories (Columbia, 2018).

Summary

Korean writer Ch’oe Myongik was a lifelong resident of Pyongyang, a city his short stories masterfully evoke in exquisite modernist prose. This book presents a selection of Ch’oe’s short fiction in translation.

Product details

• Authors: Myŏngik Ch’oe, Myongik Choe, Choe Myongik, Ch’oe Myŏngik
• Assisted by: Janet Poole (Translation)
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 19.03.2024
• EAN: 9780231202718
• ISBN: 978-0-231-20271-8
• No. of pages: 304
• Series: Weatherhead Books on Asia
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Short Stories (single author), FICTION / Literary, Short Stories, Fiction, Fiction in translation, 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999, North Korea, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary