Snowy day and other stories

Filmmaker and writer Lee makes his English-language debut with a stirring collection of stories about resistance. The remarkable and tragic title story, originally published in 1987, revolves around two South Korean soldiers--naive Private Kim and verbally abusive Corporal Choi--guarding a sentry outpost. During the year's first snowfall, Choi's hectoring of Kim leads to an act of shocking violence. "There's a Lot of Shit in Nokcheon" follows brothers Junshik and Minu, who were estranged as a result of Minu's antigovernment activism. When Minu visits Junshik, their reunion is bittersweet, and it turns out Minu has an ulterior motive. In the layered novella "A Lamp in the Sky," college student and waitress Jeong Shinhye is betrayed by a coworker and ruthlessly interrogated about her role as organizer of antiauthoritarian demonstrations. Faced with torture, she finally confesses, revealing even more to the reader than to her interrogators about the depth of her character. Though some of the shorter entries feel slight by comparison, Lee effectively and dramatically explores the sacrifices people make to hold onto their ideals. These potent tales leave a mark. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (Feb.)

Short stories exploring South Korea on the verge of transformation. How does one endure life under an authoritarian government? South Korean filmmaker Lee may be best known in the U.S. for his movies, including the critically acclaimedBurning, but this book--originally published in the 1980s and now translated into English for the first time--explores another side of his creative work. In an author's note, Lee writes that "the short stories...in this collection are based on my actual experiences in those days, or they're about my family, friends, or people close to me," and there's a lived-in realism found here--both in the fraught connections between characters and the threat of state violence. The narrator of "The Leper" learns that his father has been arrested on espionage charges, and when he confronts the older man, he discovers that his father has found an unexpected poise and confidence. That's not the only place where loved ones are at risk of incarceration; the threat of a family member's arrest looms over the opening of "Burning Paper." Sometimes, the personal and the political converge in unsettling ways. In the title story, Lee describes the way one man wound up in the army: "When the private had come home from university, wanted by the law for avoiding military service, his father had held him by his side and called the police himself. He was handcuffed in front of his father, and fifteen days later he was sent off to basic training." The collection closes with the harrowing "A Lamp in the Sky," in which a woman attempts to navigate the world of student activism and is eventually suspended from college. She's offered a way back in if she informs on her peers, and is threatened with sexual violence by the authorities. These stories abound with emotional violence that sometimes boils over into the physical, and empathetically explores characters reckoning with a lack of good options. A harrowing but clear-eyed look at South Korea's recent history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.