Shim Chong

(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)