(Simcheong)
Hwang Sok-yong
The end of the nineteenth century was a time of famine and corruption, when child trafficking was a lucrative trade feeding vast illegal traffic throughout Southeast Asia. Shim Chong is no exception to the rule: sold as a teenager, she suffers the degrading rigours of a booming sex trade, from the banks of the Yellow River to the ports of Shanghai, Taiwan and Singapore, among the lowest prostitutes and courtly geishas – at a crossroads where the Asian Opium War and arms trafficking open up to Western imperialism. With his acute vision of the movement of history, SHIM CHONG delivers a vivid landscape of broken lives and an unrelenting search for love.
‘Hwang Sok-yong has made a symbol of this Korean Nana: one of freedom in a country held captive in the worst slavery.’ Lire
‘Tender and delicate.’ Le Canard Enchaîné
Sales
- Munhakdongne Korea
- Editions Zulma France
- Einaudi Italy
- Colibri Bulgaria
- Alianza Spain
- Europa Verlag Germany
Material: Korean, French, Spanish, Italian, Bulgarian editions (539pp)