Princess Bari

A modern-day quest novel from one of Korea’s most renowned novelists. Princess Bari tells the story of a young girl, frail and brave, who escapes from famine and death in North Korea in the 1990s. Seeking refuge in China before crossing oceans in the hold of a cargo ship, she disembarks in London, with its bewildering mix of cultures, religions, and languages. In this foreign city, Bari finds work as a masseuse — but she doesn’t just heal the body, she also comforts souls, having learnt from her beloved grandmother to read the pain and nightmares of others. Alone and in a strange land, Bari will have to fight, through pain and deepening sadness, to find love and the will to stay alive.  With Princess Bari, Hwang Sok-yong entwines an old Korean myth, which tells of an abandoned princess travelling to the ends of the earth to find the elixir of life that will bring peace to the souls of the dead, with the ethereal and haunting backdrop of the modern world.PRAISE FOR HWANG SOK-YONG‘Drawing on an old Korean folktale about a princess on a quest and intertwining it with modern life in China and London, Sok-yong chronicles Bari’s journey in an enchanting style that explores Korean culture, beautifully balances reality with magic, and presents an immigrant's perspective of the world.’ Yen Magazine‘An evocative, modern-day quest from one of Korea's most renowned novelists … a story of the search for home and a timely, surreal reminder of the cost of war and the desperate measures people will take to escape.’ BMA Magazine

Kirkus Reviews

“A mesmerizing odyssey through the beauty, suffering, and rage that flow from the irrepressible desire to live.” STARRED REVIEW

Booklist

“Combining brutal adversity, escapist fantasy, and deep humanity, Hwang…indelibly alchemizes the plight of the North Korean refugee, and refugees worldwide, into resonantly timely storytelling.”

Los Angeles Review of Books

“Compelling and heartrending…In Hwang’s probing, compassionate work, Western readers unfamiliar with Eastern philosophy and culture will experience new takes on folkloric wisdom born of the enduring collective imagination.”

Reading in Translation

“[A]n unquestionably valuable book…Princess Bari deserves praise for offering the opportunity to confront difficult and timely subjects such as the environmental destruction caused by rapid modernization and the complicated nature of immigration and human trafficking.”

Corrie Hulse, The MantlePraise for Hwang Sok-Yong:

“Hwang Sok-Yong sets Princess Bari in the midst of Korean history, giving the reader insight not only into his characters, but into the history of his home country. He paints a picture of a family living through this horrific time, but intertwines it with the fantastical mythology of the great Princess Bari, known to many Koreans as Barigongju (바리공주)…perhaps we can use the mythology of Princess Bari as a response to the questions of today―as a guide to release from suffering.”

Kenzaburō Ōe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature

“Hwang Sok-yong is undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the novel in Asia today.”

Deborah Smith, translator of The VegetarianPraise for At Dusk (Scribe, July 2019)

“Hwang Sok-yong is one of South Korea's foremost writers, a powerful voice for society's marginalized, and Sora Kim-Russell's translations never falter.”

Kirkus Reviews

“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.” STARRED REVIEW

Asymptote JournalPraise for Familiar Things (Scribe, 2018)

“Hwang is a master storyteller…his writing is sparse and evocative.”

Terry Hong, Booklist

“Galvanized by Nobel Prize-winner Kenzaburo Oe’s resounding endorsement―‘undoubtedly the most powerful voice in Asia today’―and master translator Sora Kim Russell’s exquisite rendition, Hwang’s latest anglophonic import is surely poised for western success.” STARRED REVIEW

John Feffer, Boston Review

“Familiar Things…serves as a powerful and potentially contentious reminder of the difficult backstory to South Korean success. 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. Hwang’s riveting tale of second-class citizenship, in which the main characters are forced to pick through garbage to survive, gestures not just at the country’s past and what was lost during rapid modernization. It also serves as an implicit warning about the future of the Korean peninsula.”

The Guardian

“One of South Korea’s most acclaimed authors…[In Familiar Things, Hwang] challenges us to look back and reevaluate the cost of modernization, and see what and whom we have left behind.”

Financial Times

“[A] vivid depiction of a city too quick to throw away both possessions and people.”

The Economist

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

Nerd Daily

“Hwang is perhaps the most intensely compassionate writer I’ve ever encountered, telling stories of great suffering with great tenderness and without sensationalism.”

About the Author

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.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.

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