Saturday, 27 June 2020

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo


Paperback: Kim Jiyoung is a girl born to a mother whose in-laws wanted a boy.

Kim Jiyoung is a sister made to share a room while her brother gets one of his own.

Kim Jiyoung is a female preyed upon by male teachers at school. Kim Jiyoung is a daughter whose father blames her when she is harassed late at night.

Kim Jiyoung is a good student who doesn't get put forward for internships. Kim Jiyoung is a model employee but gets overlooked for promotion. Kim Jiyoung is a wife who gives up her career and independence for a life of domesticity.

Kim Jiyoung has started acting strangely.

Kim Jiyoung is depressed.

Kim Jiyoung is mad.

Kim Jiyoung is her own woman.

Kim Jiyoung is every woman.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 (2018, English translation) is the South Korean sensation that has got the whole world talking. The life story of one young woman born at the end of the twentieth century raises questions about endemic misogyny and institutional oppression that are relevant to us all.

Riveting, original and uncompromising, and also a multi-million copy selling, international bestseller, this is the most important book to have emerged from South Korea.

Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, a Guardian 'One To Look Out For 2020' and a Red Magazine 'Can't Wait To Read' Book of 2020, is translated from the Korean by Jamie Chang.

About the author: Cho Nam-Joo is a former television scriptwriter. In the writing of this book, she drew partly on her own experience as a woman who quit her job to stay at home after giving birth to a child. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 is her third novel. It has had a profound impact on gender inequality and discrimination in Korean society, and has been translated into eighteen languages.

About the translator: Jamie Chang is an award-winningliterary translator and teaches at the Ewha Womans University in Seoul and LTI Korea’s Translation Academy in South Korea. She has translated The Great Soul of Siberia (2015) by Sooyong Park.

Rating: 5/5

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