A Review of Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan

 

A Review of Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, Translated from Korean by Chi-Young Kim (Archipelago Books, 2023)

Whale by Chen Myeong-kwan

Five of the best translated novels of 2023

“Stories,” writes Cheon Myeong-kwan near the end of his lush and sprawling Whale, “are an exploration into a life filled with injustice.” Translated from the original Korean by Chi-Young Kim and shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize, Myeong-kwan’s second novel explores the unjust life of Chunhui, a 27-year-old-woman nine days out of prison for arson and mass murder she may or may not have committed.

 

Review

Five of the best translated novels of 2023

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Javier Marías’s final book, a love affair in 1980s East Berlin, reincarnation in France, a story of obsession and a South Korean romp

John Self
Friday 8 December 2023

Tomás Levinson
Javier Marías, translated by Margaret Jull Costa (Hamish Hamilton)
“I was brought up in the old-fashioned way, and could never have dreamed that one day I would be ordered to kill a woman.” Ah, how we will miss the late Javier Marías and his unique genre of slow-motion page-turners, blending thrillery plots with long, equivocating sentences. His final work, a “companion novel” to its predecessor, Berta Isla, tells the story of a washed-up spy chasing down a terrorist, and is full of the complexities, comedy and most of all contradictions that define his work. Fittingly, its closing words are “Possibly. You never know.”