Best Books from South Korea
South Korea's literary tradition has produced books of international significance spanning fiction, poetry, and non-fiction. The country's writers have engaged with its history, geography, and social realities in ways that have found readers far beyond its borders, and its place in world literature is secure.
Top 10 from South Korea
Human Acts
Multiple voices—the living and the dead—speak from the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, when South Korean students rose against martial law and were brutally suppressed. Han Kang's novel is a meditation on the human capacity for violence and for compassion.
The White Book
A meditation on whiteness—snow, bones, salt, linen—structured as a series of fragments that circle around the death of the narrator's sister shortly after birth. Han Kang's prose poem-novel is her most formally experimental work.
The Vegetarian
After a disturbing dream, Yeong-hye refuses to eat meat—a decision that her family, husband, and brother-in-law interpret as mental illness and an act of rebellion to be overcome. Han Kang's Man Booker International Prize-winning novel is a harrowing exploration of bodily autonomy and patriarchy.
Please Look After Mom
An elderly Korean woman goes missing at Seoul Station and her family—each narrating from their own perspective—must confront all that they never knew about her and all they failed to give her. A devastating portrait of the invisible labour of mothers.
