Book reading & discussion: Cho Se-hui’s "The Dwarf" April 24, 2007

Bruce Fulton
Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation
University of British Columbia

Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Wine and refreshments will be served.
$15 for non-members of The Korea Society, $10 for members.

The dark side of rapid development emerges in 'The Dwarf,' the bestselling Korean novel by Cho Se-hŭi. Critically lauded since it was first published in 1978, The Dwarf is a tale of breakneck industrialization, the painful costs it imposes on a disoriented working class and the spiritual malaise it brings to new elites. Cho's deceptively plain narration with its rapidly shifting points of view evokes the zeitgeist of South Korea in the late 1970s and his subject resonates in a world still grappling with the consequences of globalization.

At this VOICES program, professor Bruce Fulton will read from The Dwarf, which he has translated into English with Ju-Chan Fulton, and discuss its lasting significance.

About the Speaker

Bruce Fulton is the inaugural holder of the Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He obtained an MA in Korean regional studies from the University of Washington and a Ph.D. in modern Korean literature from Seoul National University. An expert in modern Korean fiction and translation, his research interests include the narrative techniques of Hwang Sun-won, contemporary Korean women's fiction and identity transformation as reflected in military-camptown fiction. He has co-translated several anthologies of modern Korean short fiction, including the prize-winning Words of Farewell: Stories by Korean Women Writers (1989; translated with Ju-Chan Fulton) and A Ready-Made Life: Early Masters of Modern Korean Fiction (1998; translated with Kim Chong-un). Fulton is co-editor (with Youngmin Kwon) of Modern Korean Fiction: An Anthology (2005; Columbia University Press) and edited the Korea sections of the Encyclopedia of Modern Asia and the Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature.

Official Website: http://www.koreasociety.org/content/view/368/45/