SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
International Booker–nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story ― an epic tale that threads together a century of Korean history.
In contemporary Seoul, a laid-off worker stages a months-long sit-in atop a sixteen-storey factory chimney. During the long and lonely nights, he talks to his ancestors, chewing on the meaning of life, on wisdom passed down the generations.
Through the lives of those ancestors, three generations of railroad workers, Mater 2-10 vividly portrays the struggles of ordinary Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. It is at once a gripping account of a nation’s longing to be free from oppression, a lyrical folktale that reflects the blood, sweat, and tears shed by modern industrial labourers, and a culmination of Hwang’s career ― a masterpiece thirty years in the making.
A true voice of a generation, Hwang shows again why he is unmatched when it comes to depicting the roots and reality of a divided nation and bringing to life the trials and tribulations of the Korean people.
A Guardian Book of the Day ― ‘A masterpiece of Korean history.’
- Maya Jaggi, The Guardian
‘Undoubtedly the most powerful voice in Asia today.’
– Nobel Prize–winner Kenzaburō Ōe
‘This nearly 500-page novel opens with a laid-off railroad worker in Seoul camped out on a platform atop a factory chimney, where he will stay for 410 consecutive days in protest. As he braves the elements, his ancestors, also railroad workers, visit to relive the murders, imprisonment and torture they endured under Japanese and US occupation while fighting for better working conditions. The Nobel Prize in literature almost always goes to a European, but for the next one that’s awarded to a non-European, I’m rooting for Hwang Sok-yong, perhaps South Korea’s most renowned author.’
– Leland Cheuk, book critic and author of the No Good Very Bad Asian
‘Bittersweet and darkly comic … richly rewarding read … This is a novel that shines a light on what it means to be an industrial worker in Korea and to wrestle with the issues of worker exploitation, international tension, and a still-divided nation.’
– Driftless Area Review
‘[A]n absorbing look at an intriguing period of Korean history.’
– Tony's Reading List
‘Epic.’
– Pile by the Bed
Praise for Familiar Things:
‘A powerful examination of capitalism from one of South Korea’s most acclaimed authors … [Hwang] challenges us to look back and reevaluate the cost of modernisation, and see what and whom we have left behind.’
– The Guardian
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