Yi Kwang-su's The Soil and Jang Jung-il's When Adam Opens His Eyes

Korea Herald

(LTI Korea)

My wife mentioned to me that the Hankyoreh, Korea's left-leaning newspaper, had announced the upcoming publication of Yi Kwang-su's novel The Soil in English translation, the very one that we translated, as well as our translation of Jang Jung-il's When Adam Opens His Eyes. That Hankyoreh article, however, appeared in Korean, so I waited another day for an announcement in English, and sure enough, the Korea Herald came through with one, an article by Claire Lee titled "English translations of Korean literature published in the U.S." (October 18, 2013). The article does not go into much detail and does not mention us by name, but does have a few words about the books that we translated:

The 10 volumes to be published next month include Yi Kwang-su's 1932 fiction "The Soil," which tells the story of a lawyer and an idealist who dedicates his life to helping the residents of a rural community during Korea's Japanese colonial period . . . . [Among o]ther inclusions in the 10 volumes . . . [is] Jang Jung-il's "When Adam Opens His Eyes."

According to the article, "The first 10 volumes of Dalkey Archive Press and the Literature Translation Institute of Korea's Korean literature series will be hitting U.S. bookstores on Nov. 16." That's about a month away, but by a happy coincidence, our complimentary copies arrived the same day as the Korea Herald article. Here are two clearer images:

I borrowed both images -- Yi Kwang-su's The Soil and Jang Jung-il's When Adam Opens His Eyes-- from Amazon. If you click to enlarge and clarify, you can see my wife's name first (as is proper), then my own.

Support Korean literature by purchasing and reading the books, but be forewarned on Jang Jung-il, whose writings are not for the faint of heart!