Mater 2-10

International Booker-nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story - an epic, multi-generational tale that threads together a century of Korean history.

Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, Mater 2-10 vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. It is at once a powerful account that captures a nation's longing for a rail line to reconnect North and South, a magical-realist novel that manages to reflect the lives of modern industrial workers, 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 grief of a divided nation and bringing to life the cultural identity and trials and tribulations of the Korean people.

Review:

'Undoubtedly the most powerful voice in Asia today.'
-- Nobel Prize-winner Kenzaburo Oe

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 *

Praise for Familiar Things:

'Hwang Sok-yong is one of South Korea's foremost writers, a powerful voice for society's marginalised.'
-- Deborah Smith, translator of The Vegetarian

Praise for At Dusk:

'Having been imprisoned for political reasons, Hwang has a restrained, delicate touch, alive to the nuances of memory, the slipperiness of the past, and the difficult choices life forces us to make ... Subtly political, deeply humane, a story about home, loss, and the cost of a country's advancement.'
-- Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Praise for Familiar Things:

'As one of the country's most prominent novelists, Hwang has never shied away from controversy ... With Familiar Things, Hwang turns his attention to the underside of South Korea's remarkable economic development, namely, the vast underclass it has created.'
* Boston Review *

Praise for Familiar Things:

'Sora Kim-Russell's translation moves gracefully between gritty, whiffy realism and folk-tale spookiness.'
* The Economist *

Praise for At Dusk:

'It's a regretful, bittersweet exploration of modernisation, which picks away at the country's past and present, slowly becoming a moving reflection of what we gain and lose as individuals and a society in the name of progress ... [Hwang's] writing is laced with the hard-won wisdom of a man with plenty left to say.'