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This 2006 collection of short stories is in line with the unsettling, engrossing style of Ha's other two collections that have been translated into English, the critical and commercial successes Flowers of Mold and Bluebeard's First Wife.
A best-seller in Korea, Ha Seong-nan is one of the stars of contemporary short fiction, writing edgy, socially conscious stories that bring to mind the novels of Han Kang and the film Parasite.
"[I]mpressive...Ha secures the reader's investment by gradually revealing her characters' motivations and backstories as the scope of their often-irresolvable predicaments comes into focus. Seldom optimistic yet always arresting, this collection is not to be missed." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"These mesmerizing stories of disconnection and detritus unfurl with the surreal illogic of dreams—it's as impossible to resist their pull as it is to understand, in retrospect, how circumstance succeeded circumstance to finally deliver the reader into a moment as indelible as it is unexpected. Janet Hong's translation glitters like a blade." —Susan Choi
This information about Wafers was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Ha Seong-nan is the author of five short story collections—including Bluebeard's First Wife and Flowers of Mold—and three novels. Over her career, she's received a number of prestigious awards, such as the Dong-in Literary Award in 1999, Hankook Ilbo Literary Prize in 2000, the Isu Literature Prize in 2004, the Oh Yeong-su Literary Award in 2008, and the Contemporary Literature (Hyundae Munhak) Award in 2009.
Janet Hong is a writer and translator based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has appeared in Brick: A Literary Journal, Literary Hub, Asia Literary Review, Words Without Borders, and the Korea Times. Her other translations include Han Yujoo's The Impossible Fairy Tale and Ancco's Bad Friends.
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