Winter in Sokcho

2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE As if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Womana beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author Its 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 Norths 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 knowsthe gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As shes 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 Dusapins voice is distinctive and unmistakable.