A perspective on literary fiction that only takes work being done in one language into account is, by its very nature, going to be incomplete. The process of translation into English–that which does and does not get translated, from specific writers to specific languages– remains a frequently discussed subject in literary circles. Recently, fiction translated from Korean into English has received a fair share of attention. Most notably, Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian has earned abundant acclaim in its English translation: it won the Man Booker International Prize, was named as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, and ended up on the shortlist for The Morning News’s Tournament of Books.
Han Kang isn’t the only writer to have a higher profile among English-language readers in recent year. The respected independent press Dalkey Archive Press debuted a new series of fiction in translation. In 2015, The New Yorker ran a great overview of contemporary Korean fiction by Ed Park, with a focus on the Dalkey Archive Press series. And more recently, advocates like translator Deborah Smith (who’s recently worked on novels by Han Kang and Bae Suah) have also helped raise the profile of Korean authors in the Anglophone literary world.
In recent years, even more highly-received books have appeared in translation from Korean, including…
