Novel
Turbid Rivers
탁류
Chae Man-sik · 1937
Synopsis
In Gunsan, Jeong Jusa, unemployed, loses what he has left on the rice exchange. His eldest daughter, Cho-bong, helps out in a pharmacy and supports the family; she is drawn to Nam Seung-jae, a poor medical student who lodges with them, but her father rules him out because he is an orphan. When her employer, Pak Je-ho, sells the pharmacy and leaves for Seoul, she finds herself without work. Go Tae-su, a bank clerk who passes for rich, asks for her hand, and her parents accept.
Context
The novel appeared in serial form in the Chosun Ilbo from October 1937 to May 1938, shortly before its author's arrest, then in volume form in 1939 from Pakmun Seogwan. The action is set in the thirties, when Gunsan was prospering as a rice-exporting port, and the Jaebo-seonchang district is its main setting, based on a report in the Seoul Shinmun. The library of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea sees in it a portrait of the manners and ways of loving of the period, and a penetrating look at the way women are made into objects.
Who it is for
A long novel, of about six hundred pages in the original, with many characters, with no French translation.
Prizes and reception
Translated into Japanese in 1999, then into Chinese in 2011 and into English in 2016, the last two versions with Korean public support.
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