One Thousand Chestnut Trees: a Novel of Korea


Mira Stout - 1997
    In her journeys, she discovers a legacy left behind by the noble clan from which she is descended--a temple erected by her great-grandfather in defiance of centuries of invasions against Korea, and the one thousand chestnut trees that shield it from view.

History of Korea: A Captivating Guide to Korean History, Including Events Such as the Mongol Invasions, the Split into North and South, and the Korean War


Captivating History - 2020
     Free History BONUS Inside! The Korean Peninsula today is divided into two, but there was a time when this peninsula was divided into many states. Over the course of time, and besieged by expansive transient dynasties outside of this modest piece of land, many clans and tribes overran their lands. Of all those malicious and greedy potential overlords, none managed to prevail. The soil is rich with the blood of the people who made Korea happen, and it is the Korean people who rose victorious among the maelstrom of dead empires led by hated tyrants and wars fought by people in lands far beyond their own. The Koreans are survivors, known for their persistence and courage. In History of Korea: A Captivating Guide to Korean History, Including Events Such as the Mongol Invasions, the Split into North and South, and the Korean War, you will discover topics such as Land of the Bear The Dragon of the East Sea Dynasties Rise and Fall The Joseon Dynasty of Goryeo Foreign Invasions Merchants, Farmers, and Foreigners From Independence to Annexation Korea at War North Korea South Korea And much, much more! So if you want to learn more about the history of Korea, scroll up and click the "add to cart" button!

The Story of Hong Gildong


Unknown
    Like its English counterpart, Robin Hood, it has been adapted into countless movies, television shows, novels and comics. Its memorable lines are known to virtually every Korean by heart. Until now, this incredible 19th century fable has been all but inaccessible to English readers.Hong Gildong, the brilliant but illegitimate son of a government minister, cannot advance in society due to his secondary status, so he leaves home to become the leader of a band of outlaws who rob the rich to give to the poor. On the way to building his own empire and gaining acceptance from his family, Hong Gildong vanquishes assassins, battles monsters, and conquers kingdoms. Minsoo Kang's expressive and animated new translation finally makes the original text of this classic available in English, re-introducing a noble and righteous outlaw and sharing a beloved hallmark of Korean culture.

Ion Creangă


George Călinescu - 1938
    

Following the Path of Love


Carol Colyer - 2019
    Now they are ready to follow a new path and finally find happiness together. Nevertheless, their quest for a new life will soon turn into a risky adventure that will change everyone involved forever. Will their friendship survive the challenges they will face? Will their worst nightmare of losing each other become a reality?Hunter and Ryker have had a rivalry for years. They may have grown up in the same town, but they have gone down two very different roads. They are destined to fight one another until one of them is defeated. Both of them carry their own emotional burdens that have stigmatized their lives. Is there any chance that they come to terms with each other? How will an unexpected event change their life plans radically?June and Sierra will have to overcome their trust issues in order to survive. Hunter and Ryker, on the other hand, have to give the benefit of the doubt to each other. When the four of them come up against each other, how will the balance of their relations be disturbed? Will they manage to handle all the conflicts and the ordeals they will go through?"Following the Path of Love" is a historical western romance novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

Comfort Woman


Nora Okja Keller - 1997
    Comfort Woman is the story of Akiko, a Korean refugee of World War II, and Beccah, her daughter by an American missionary. The two women are living on the edge of society--and sanity--in Honolulu, plagued by Akiko's periodic encounters with the spirits of the dead, and by Beccah's struggles to reclaim her mother from her past. Slowly and painfully Akiko reveals her tragic story and the horrifying years she was forced to serve as a comfort woman to Japanese soldiers. As Beccah uncovers these truths, she discovers her own strength and the secret of the powers she herself possessed--the precious gifts her mother has given her.A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller In 1995, Nora Okja Keller received the Pushcart Prize for Mother Tongue, a piece that is part of Comfort Woman.

The Weary Generations


Abdullah Hussein - 1963
    A vivid depiction of the widespread disillusionment and seismic upheavals of the Partition era that lead to the creation of Pakistan and Bangladesh, there has never been a more opportune time to discover one of the most important writings about the post-colonial trauma in the region. Peter Owen editor and rights manager Simon Smith describes the book as ‘One of the best books, if not the best, we have ever published’.Beginning with the struggle of the people of India against the British Raj, this story of love and marriage between two people of totally different social backgrounds which crumbles almost as soon as as it takes place mirrors the uneasy ‘marriage’ between the British and their Indian Empire – both unions ultimately ending in a parting of the ways. Naim, son of a peasant, marries Azra, the daughter of a rich landowner. Fighting for the British during the First World War he loses an arm. Invalided home, he becomes angered at the subjugation of his countrymen under the Raj and aligns himself with the opposition. His ideals are swept away after Independence in 1947 when he realises that, as Muslims, his family is no longer safe in their Indian home and that they must migrate to the newly created Pakistan.

The Korean War: History in an Hour


Andrew Mulholland - 2013
    Not only the result of a carving of Korean territories following the Pacific conflicts of the Second World War, it was also a battle of ideologies as General MacArthur’s American military forces occupied the southern half and Stalin’s Soviet forced supported the northern half.Initiated by infantry movements and air raids, the region gradually became mired in a static trench war by July 1951, and would continue to cost both sides in both morale and human lives. The Korean War: History in an Hour is the concise story to one of the most bitter and enduring conflicts of the post-war era.

We Were Always Eating Expired Things


Cheryl Julia Lee - 2014
    The poems deal with the impossibility of such an endeavor and celebrate our persistence in striving anyway.At its core, the collection is built around a very wise line from a Beatles song: I want to hold your hand. I want to hold your hand with no further expectations. I want to hold your hand instead of telling you I understand when I don’t. I want to hold your hand although we don’t always get along. I want to hold your hand despite the calluses, scratches, and scars that get in the way. I want to hold your hand knowing I’ll have to let it go one day.I just want to hold your hand.

A Wink from the Universe


Martin Flanagan - 2018
    They were the rank underdogs and they swept to victory on an unprecedented tide of goodwill that washed over the nation. Only Martin Flanagan could bring to life this particular miracle. The club's two guiding spirits - captain Bob Murphy and coach Luke Beveridge - welcomed him in, Beveridge making available his match diaries, pre-match notes and video highlights. Flanagan interviewed every player, watched every match, talked with the trainers, the women in the football department, the fans who never miss a training session, the cheer squad.What Flanagan shows is that the Bulldogs found a new way to play partly because they found a new way to be a team - a new way to support each other, even a new way to be. A Wink from the Universe takes us into the heart of the community Luke Beveridge and Bob Murphy dreamt into being with the support of the Bulldog people around them. This is a classic of sportswriting - a book for fans of the club, and of the game, but also a book for anyone who wants to know how a group of people can will a miracle to happen.

Human Acts


Han Kang - 2014
    From Dong-ho's best friend who meets his own fateful end; to an editor struggling against censorship; to a prisoner and a factory worker, each suffering from traumatic memories; and to Dong-ho's own grief-stricken mother; and through their collective heartbreak and acts of hope is the tale of a brutalized people in search of a voice.An award-winning, controversial bestseller, Human Acts is a timeless, pointillist portrait of an historic event with reverberations still being felt today, by turns tracing the harsh reality of oppression and the resounding, extraordinary poetry of humanity.

Top 50 Villains (Horrible Histories)


Terry Deary - 2016
    From gangs of gangsters to maniacs who massacre, meet the biggest baddies in history and discover how they tortured and terrified their way to the top. Find out whose savage speciality was nostril-splitting, which evil emperor served up guts in gold dishes, whose axe-murdering antics were turned into a ballet and much more. It's all you need to know about villains - all the gore and more!

I'll Be Right There


Shin Kyung-sook - 2010
    When Yoon receives a distressing phone call from her ex-boyfriend after eight years of separation, memories of a tumultuous youth begin to resurface, forcing her to re-live the most intense period of her life. With profound intellectual and emotional insight, she revisits the death of her beloved mother, the strong bond with her now-dying former college professor, the excitement of her first love, and the friendships forged out of a shared sense of isolation and grief.   Yoon’s formative experiences, which highlight both the fragility and force of personal connection in an era of absolute uncertainty, become immediately palpable. Shin makes the foreign and esoteric utterly familiar: her use of European literature as an interpreter of emotion and experience bridges any gaps between East and West. Love, friendship, and solitude are the same everywhere, as this book makes poignantly clear.

A Gesture Life


Chang-rae Lee - 1999
    It is the story of a proper man, an upstanding citizen who comes to epitomize the decorous values of his New York suburban town. Yet as his story unfolds, precipitated by events that take place around him, we see his life begin to unravel. Courteous, honest, hardworking, and impenetrable, Franklin Hata, a Japanese man of Korean birth, is careful never to overstep his bounds. He makes his neighbors feel comfortable in his presence, keeps his garden well tended, bids his customers good-bye at the doorway to his medical supply shop, and ignores the taunts of local boys. Now facing his retirement years alone, Hata begins to reflect on the price he's had to pay for living this quiet "gesture life."After suffering minor injuries in an accidental fire, he remembers the painful, failed relationships of his past; with Mary Burns, a widow with whom he had an affair, and with Sunny, a Korean girl he adopted when she was seven, who is now a grown woman he hasn't spoken to or seen in years. As Hata recalls the strained, troubled relationship with Sunny, he begins to understand why his daughter, unlike himself, "felt no more at home in this town, or in this house of mine, or perhaps even with me, than when she first arrived at Kennedy Airport."Unknown to Sunny, there is a secret that has shaped the core of Hata's being; his terrible, forbidden love for a young Korean woman from his past. Serving as a medic in the Japanese army during World War II, Hata was assigned the task of overseeing the female "volunteers; women taken against their will to provide sexual favors for the men in the battalion. One of these "comfort women" he came to love. These remembrances, tinged with grief and regret, ultimately draw Hata once again to his daughter; and help him begin to attain a more truthful understanding of himself.

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite


Suki Kim - 2014
    Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without noticing, begins to hum it. It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields - except for the 270 students at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has accepted a job teaching English. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them to write, all under the watchful eye of the regime. Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues - evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. She is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. To them, everything in North Korea is the best, the tallest, the most delicious, the envy of all nations. Still, she cannot help but love them - their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. As the weeks pass, she begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own - at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. The students in turn offer Suki tantalizing glimpses into their lives, from their thoughts on how to impress girls to their disappointment that soccer games are only televised when the North Korean team wins. Then Kim Jong-il dies, leaving the students devastated, and leading Suki to question whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged.Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world's most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls "soldiers and slaves."