Princess Bari - Tapa blanda

Praise for Familiar Things (Scribe, 2018)

"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."--Terry Hong, Booklist (starred)

"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."--John Feffer, Boston Review

"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."--The Guardian

"Familiar Things is a fine little novel, showing a crushing, grim reality in which the resilient human spirit and imagination makes do."--M.A.Orthofer, The Complete Review

"[A] vivid depiction of a city too quick to throw away both possessions and people."--Financial Times

Praise for the author

"Hwang Sok-yong is undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the novel in Asia today."--Kenzaburō Ōe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature

"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."--Deborah Smith, translator of The Vegetarian

"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."

"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."

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

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.