Whale

Cheon Myeong-kwan is a South Korean novelist and screenwriter. Upon publication of his first story, “Frank and I” (2003), he received the prestigious Munhakdongne New Writer Award. His debut novel, Whale, was published the following year, won the 10th Munhakdongne Novel Award and became one of the most loved novels in South Korea, where it is regarded as a modern classic. His work has been translated into eight languages.Chi-Young Kim is a literary translator and editor. A recipient of the Man Asian Literary Prize for her work on Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin, she has translated over a dozen books, including works by Ae-ran Kim, You-jeong Jeong, and Young-ha Kim, among others.

"In recent years East Asia has usurped Latin America as the lodestar of magic realism… Cheon Myeong-kwan’s Whale, a novel of tycoons, ghosts and cinephiles that was first published in South Korea in 2003 and has now been translated into English by Chi-Young Kim, rides the crest of this wave… Told in an omniscient and playful narrative voice, smoothly translated by Chi-Young, this is a distinctly Korean take on Great Expectations, a tale of aspiration and folly punctuated with artisanal bricks and dried fish."