Oh Jung-hee: Chinatown [2025]

A selection of the best short stories by Oh Jung-hee, one of South Korea's most influential writers

In this emblematic selection of her stories, Oh Jung-hee probes beneath the surface of seemingly quotidian lives to expose nightmarish family configurations warped by desertion, psychosis, and death. In 'Chinatown' a young girl living on the edge of the city's Chinese community comes of age among mundane violences, collisions with adult sexuality and the American occupation; in 'The Garden Party' a woman grapples with her conflicting identities of wife, mother and writer at an alcohol-fuelled gathering. Throughout a career spanning six decades, Oh Jung-hee has drawn comparisons to Alice Munro, Virginia Woolf, and Joyce Carol Oates, and is assuredly a trailblazing writer.