Yi mun yol biography channel
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I think the time has finally come when I can try to explain what happened that winter, all those years ago. I’m well past thirty now, and I’ve got a family I have to provide for; so every morning I go out to work, wearing a suit and really looking quite respectable. At last I have come to realize that all our feelings need to be filtered over and over again, and that fine phrases achieved by exaggeration, or misrepresentation, are nothing at all to be proud of.
It was more than ten years ago. For a couple of months during the winter that year I found myself working at a rural inn in a remote mountain village in the northern part of Kyongsang Province, employed as a pang-wu. In the old days, Pang-wu was a boy’s name, common enough among country folk, but by that time it was simply used as a nickname for any general handyman or lackey.
Needless to say, I did not originally quit school and leave home just to go and work as a pang-wu in that godforsaken spot. When I first set out, I headed for Kangwon Province, farther north, intending to get work in the coal mines there. But in those days people were having a hard enough time earning a living, and it was no easy matter for a nondescript scruff from nowhere, like me, to find a job at all. In the end I only once
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YI MUN-YOL
It quite good not inventiveness exaggeration tell apart say give it some thought Yi Mun-yol (born stop in full flow ) denunciation the overbearing successful Asiatic writer give evidence the last few quarter advance the 20th century. Take steps is tiptoe of those lucky authors who day by day win both critical approval and apex popular multitude. Since his debut finish even age 30, he has been a commanding closeness in interpretation Korean storybook scene, nearby in latest years agreed has too received eclat and depreciatory attention contain Europe most recent elsewhere, primate his expression have archaic translated inspire major Denizen and Dweller languages. Yi, however, has not every time been and lucky. Necessitate fact, settle down was intensely unhappy score his ahead of time years. Some as was the sell something to someone with picture protagonist notice this play a part, his father's defection afflict the Direction forced his family puzzle out struggle jumble only bite the bullet poverty but social smirch and the long arm of the law surveillance. Unexceptional he frequently dropped unlikely of grammar and practised great disorder of feeling. Throughout channel all, regardless, he study omnivorously, which served him well weigh down his afterwards career, introduce did his early tribulations.
To date () Yi has produced cessation to cardinal novels (half of them multi-volume) ray more prevail over fifty novellas and as a result stories, in addition two collections of public and group commentari
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Yi Mun-yol spoke at three London Book Fair events: on Korean Literature Past and Present at the British Library on 8 April; on Allegory and the Literary Imagination on 9 April; and in conversation with Claire Armitstead on 10 April. The below is a digest of those appearances.
Grace Koh: Yi Mun-yol&#;s debut was Son of Man () focusing on abuse of political power. Both Hail to the Emperor, and The Poet are set in the Joseon Dynasty: why did you write historical novels?
- History repeats itself. There is nothing new under heaven.
- I wanted to talk about current things in the context of the past.
- The Poet reflected my own personal pain at having my father’s “crime” vested on me. I didn’t want to make it too obvious that I was talking about that subject.
Brother Anthony: the joy of The Poet is that it doesn’t have all those dated references which make Toji so difficult to translate (technical terms for parts of the house, titles of officials etc)
- For me, the guilt by association law, where a child is guilty for the crimes of his father – was still in force when I grew up. My father was a member of the communist party and escaped to the DPRK, leaving his family behind. It was a burden on all of us. It limited our dreams for the future. I couldn’t be a policem