- Overview
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Advent of a New Sensation Munhakdongne University Fiction Award winner LEE Jongsan's first short story collection
- Book Intro
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(English) What Is in the Empty Shopping Bag
Recommended by Chung Bora, author of Cursed Bunny
If there was a genre for feminism horror, this book would be the representative work. Readers will either find themselves sympathizing and understanding, or horrified to sympathize and understand.
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"Inside the Empty Paper Bag"
This story is about Jina, a first-hand witness of an incident in a bus. A drunk passenger smashed a man in his thirties with an empty paper bag for not giving up his seat. The young man died of a heart attack on the site, and the incident was covered in major news media. Jina shared her story with her husband as she testified as a witness, but Jina's husband remained apathetic. Her husband acted like a military person both in and out of house. His critical attitude examining every corner of the house for cleanliness was no different from evaluating a military dormatory. His condescending tone was as if he was instructing an inferior. His disdainful attitude degraded Jina. Just like the man who died of an empty paper bag, Jina suffers from invisible violence from her husband. From some time, Jina started seeing the dead man in herself. She kept thinking about the murdered young man, and began to be bothered by her authoritative husband.
"Quivering Mirror"
The protagonist who was a victim of a horrible stalking witnessed the murder of her happy family in their cozy home. In this loving house, every one of the protagonist's family members was murdered except for the protagonist. Several years later when the protagonist thought she got over it all, she notices that her mirror shook at 10:11 pm. On the other side of the mirror were her dead family members. Sometimes they appeared in peace as they were before the incident. Other times, they were covered in blood, like the day of murder. Planning to write her own story as a novel, the protagonist's distinction between reality and the world beyond the mirror became blurred. She tried to save her family -- trapped behind the mirror -- but fails. Suffering from the trauma of stalking, the protagonist must seek to leave the happy past behind, accept her lonely reality, and move on.
- About the Author
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Lee Jongsan
(English) Lee Jong-san made a literary debut with the novel, Hello, Elephant, the winner of 2012 Munhakdongne University Novel Award. Lee published three additional novels, Lazy Life, Customer, and Mud (Foundation). Customer was awarded the Queer Literary Award by Rainbow Bookmark. Lee authored short stories included in South Korea's first queer novel anthology series Q-Q Queer Short Stories Collection, Do Not Stop the Love; a science fiction anthology, Pandemic: Six Worlds; and a young adult queer romance collection, So We Love. Lee is interested in exploring complex or schizophrenic gender identity. Lee is writing a serialized fiction collection on pandemic, Bug Storm.