A punchy first novel. -- Guardian Top 10 Best New Books in Translation
As if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author
It s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.
The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an authentic Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.
An exquisitely-crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Dusapin s voice is distinctive and unmistakable.
'Enigmatic, beguiling...This finely crafted debut explores topics of identity and heredity in compelling fashion. In its aimless, outsider protagonist there are echoes of Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman.' -- Irish Times
'The bustling seaside resort of Sokcho in South Korea is the perfect backdrop for this quietly haunting debut.' -- Daily Mail
'Crisp and poetic.' -- i
'Dazzling.' -- Vogue Top Five Debuts
'A fascinating portrait of life in modern Korea.' -- S Magazine
About the author
Elisa Shua Dusapin was born in France and raised in Paris, Seoul and Switzerland. Winter in Sokcho (Hiver à Sokcho) is her first novel. Published in 2016 to wide acclaim, it was awarded the Prix Robert Walser and the Prix Régine Desforges, and has been translated into six languages. Aneesa Abbas Higgins is a London-based translator and writer. Her translations include What Became of the White Savage by François Garde, which was the winner of a PEN Translates award, and Seven Stones by Vénus Khoury-Ghata, for which she was shortlisted for the Scott Moncrieff Prize.
