Mater 2-10:
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024
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Mater 2-10:
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024
Overview
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE
International Booker–nominated virtuoso Hwang Sok-yong is back with another powerful story—an epic tale that threads together a century of Korean history.
In contemporary Seoul, a laid-off worker stages a months-long sit-in atop a sixteen-story factory chimney. During the long and lonely nights, he talks to his ancestors, chewing on the meaning of life, on wisdom passed down the generations.
Through the lives of those ancestors, three generations of railroad workers, Mater 2-10 vividly portrays the struggles of ordinary Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. It is at once a gripping account of a nation’s longing to be free from oppression, a lyrical folktale that reflects the blood, sweat, and tears shed by modern industrial laborers, and a culmination of Hwang’s career—a masterpiece thirty years in the making.
A true voice of a generation, Hwang shows again why he is unmatched when it comes to depicting the roots and reality of a divided nation and bringing to life the trials and tribulations of the Korean people.
Details
- Format
- Size
- Extent
- ISBN
- RRP
- Pub date
- Rights held
- Paperback
- 5.08in x 7.8in
- 496 pages
- 9781957363998
- USD$22.00
- 3 December 2024
- World
Categories
Awards
- Shortlisted for the 2024 The International Booker Prize
Praise
“This nearly 500-page novel opens with a laid-off railroad worker in Seoul camped out on a platform atop a factory chimney, where he will stay for 410 consecutive days in protest. As he braves the elements, his ancestors, also railroad workers, visit to relive the murders, imprisonment and torture they endured under Japanese and US occupation while fighting for better working conditions. The Nobel Prize in literature almost always goes to a European, but for the next one that’s awarded to a non-European, I’m rooting for Hwang Sok-yong, perhaps South Korea’s most renowned author.”
“Bittersweet and darkly comic … richly rewarding read … This is a novel that shines a light on what it means to be an industrial worker in Korea and to wrestle with the issues of worker exploitation, international tension, and a still-divided nation.”
About the Author
Hwang Sok-yong, born in 1943, is arguably Korea’s most renowned author. In 1993, he was sentenced to seven years in prison for an unauthorised trip to the North to promote exchange between artists in the two Koreas. Five years later, he was released on a special pardon by the new president. He has been given the Mark of Respect Award, acknowledging him as a distinguished national cultural figure and leader, and is the recipient of Korea’s highest literary prizes, including the Manhae Literary Prize, the Danjae Literary Prize, the Isan Literary Prize, and the Daesan Literature Prize. He has been shortlisted for the Prix Femina étranger, and for his novel At Dusk he was nominated for the 2019 International Booker Prize and awarded the 2018 Èmile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature. His novels and short stories have been published around the world to wide acclaim. He lives in South Korea.
Translators
Sora Kim-Russell has translated numerous works of Korean fiction, including Hwang Sok-yong’s Princess Bari, Familiar Things, At Dusk, and Mater 2-10 which was shortlisted for the 2024 International Booker Prize. She lives in South Korea.
Winner of the 2019 LTI Korea Award for Aspiring Translators and the 2021 Korea Times Modern Korean Literature Translation Award, Youngjae Josephine Bae’s translations include Imaginary Athens: urban space and memory in Berlin, Tokyo, and Seoul (Routledge, 2020) and A Global History of Ginseng: imperialism, modernity, and orientalism (Routledge, 2022).
