Recognizing the reality of women
South Korean writer's books find resonance with readers inside and outside her home country, Yang Yang reports.
When tickets for South Korean writer Choi Eun-young's book signing and meet-and-greet event in the Langyuan Vintage cultural and art zone in late March were released online, they immediately sold out.
In 2023, the Chinese translation of her novel Bright Night topped the foreign literature list on review platform Douban. With a rating of nine out of 10, it entered the top 10 list of the most popular feminist books of all time on the platform, alongside Italian writer Elena Ferrante's The Story of the Lost Child, French Nobel Prize laureate Annie Ernaux's A Woman's Story, and Canadian Writer Margaret Atwood's The Testaments.
Bright Night follows 32-year-old Ji-yeon as she moves to the quiet coastal city of Heeryong, seeking refuge from the unresolved chapters of her life. There, a chance encounter reunites her with her long-estranged grandmother after two decades of separation. Through fragmented memories and whispered family histories — stories of her grandmother's resilience and her mother's silent struggles — Ji-yeon begins to untangle the generational threads that have shaped her identity.
