The Portable Library of Korean Literature/ Short Fiction 1

by Yi, Sang
Trans. by Ahn, Jung-hyo & James B. Lee

Original title: Nalgae
size: 18.8x12cm, 51pages. publisher: Jimoondang, 2001.

About this book
"The Wings," a dark allegory of infidelity and self-deception, probes the ambiguities of perception and language through an unreliable narrator who bears an uncanny resemblance to the author himself.
In "Encounters and Departures," a tale of two lovers fated to elude each other, the blurring of fiction and reality through the manipulation of autobiographical elements figures more prominently.
Geumhong, the female protagonist in the story--who reappears under various quises in Yi Sang's other prose works--is a woman he met at the hot springs of Backcheon, where he went to recuperate after the onset of the tuberculosis. Yi's preoccupation with the fragmented condition of modern life--what his early detractors pointed to as evidence of Yi's irrelevance to a national literature--is precisely what now makes him a pivotal figure in modern Korean letters.
-- From the back cover