- Overview
-
The eight short stories contained in the anthology of Sim Eunsin present characters who reflect on themselves in the course of everyday life; they feel alone and bleak about their reality yet a sliver of hope shines on them and the readers who are reading their stories.
- Book Intro
-
(English) The Dialectics of Van Gogh
Will my night come to an end soon?
Finding a sliver of hope amid one’s dim reality
This is the second anthology of short stories by Sim Eunsin in which she introduces diverse literary spaces where her characters breathe and live most vividly in the spaces the author created, such as the Amur River in Russia, Taehwa River in Ulsan, the South Pole base where penguins live, and Arles, France, where Vincent Van Gogh lived.
The eight short stories contained in the anthology of Sim Eunsin present characters who reflect on themselves in the course of everyday life; they feel alone and bleak about their reality yet a sliver of hope shines on them and the readers who are reading their stories.
Here is where we take our roots
And here begins “the narrative of nesting”
Sim Eunsin’s stories are composed of literary space where one can reflect on the meaning of life. This literary space is found at times in faraway places and sometimes right here where we are rooted.
The characters in her short stories are not special. They are ordinary persons who are injured by love, who are conflicted about a stagnant life, or who are weighed down about becoming a parent. Their situations do not change much at the end of the story. But they discover a sliver of hope. As in the story, can hope also enter the mind of readers who live a lonely and difficult life? We hope we, too, can get a glimpse of it in this mundane space we live in.
- About the Author
-
Sim Eunsin
(English) Born in Busan, Sim Eun-sin studied Korean literature as an undergraduate and counseling psychology in graduate school. She teaches in middle and high schools. She debuted as a writer after winning the Monthly Literature New Writer Award with her short story, “The Passion of Mathew” in 2016. Memory of Wind, her full-length fiction was published in commemoration of the five-hundred-year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 2017 as well as the thirtieth anniversary of the South Korean June Democratic Movement. In 2018 Young Writers, her short story, “Imago,” was printed. In 2019, Bubble Venus, a work of fiction about blind human avarice was published and in the same year, she was the winner of Gyeongbuk Daily Literary Competition with “Albino.” At present, she is active as the member of Korean Authors Association and Twenty-First Century Fiction.
- Recommendation
-
Sim Eun-sin's "narrative of nest" is a very important fictional device. In an everyday reality where moving, wandering from place to place, and migration take place frequently, the characters who attempt to recreate their nest that is destroyed or dissolved shine forth. A novel is a work of art where characters are created. One understands the characters of Sim Eun-sin as a synecdoche of a society. I believe this is exemplary of more complex intertextuality, and it will lead to composite forces. My respect for the author who is convinced that in spite of the dark and difficult age we live in, as long as hope and love shine on us as faint light, we will not perish. Gu Mo-ryong, Literary Critic