From Wonso Pond: A Korean Novel

This translation is so deft I would actually give it four-and-a-half stars. As a graduate student studying modern Korean literature at Harvard, and a teaching fellow there in Korean, this was the first novel I ever read in Korean cover to cover (five stars for the original). I introduced my students to it. This is a worthy translation of an estimable work by a writer whose writing style I would characterize as resonantly Hemingwayesque and whose thematic forays I would liken to those of Upton Sinclair. (I say this noting the parallel journey from author to activist in Sinclair's fiction and political leanings. Sinclair twice ran unsuccessfully for the United States Congress on the Socialist ticket!) The only other clarification I would add is that "Mother and Daughter" was serialized but is usually anthologized as a long-form "short" story/novella and, I believe, appropriately so. In length, cumulative effect and structure, "From Wonso Pond" should be considered Kang's only novel.

I gave this two stars only because hate is too strong a word. The build-up, the critical acclaim, etc., all led me to believe this was a truly exceptional work--WRONG!! Perhaps because I am very well read on this subject, perhaps because I have read several very superior books covering the very same time frame and background, but this is nothing special, and very underwhelming. You can do better.

Loved this book and the writer. Very enjoyable to read this knowing her radical politics and views, she slips in some great critiques of colonial Japan past the censors.