Whaleis a rollercoaster adventure through Korean history and culture, a magical and grotesque epic . . . The plot twists and turns and hurtles along in a way that makes you pleasantly dizzy; the imagery and language in the book are also so rich, with the innocence and darkness of a fairy-tale combined with a playful sense of irony. The translatorChi-Young Kimhas done an amazing job, the translation is so dynamic and full of life.”— The International Booker Prize 2023 judges The book consists of four intersecting storylines and each focus on four women: one called The Old Crone, her one eyed daughter, Geumbok and her daughter Chunhui. Through many surreal instances ranging from mind reading elephants to biblical floods, these four characters lives overlap and shape their destinies. The whale itself is a cinema which Geumbok builds after feeling emancipated by seeing a real life whale.

The truth of the matter is that I absolutely loved this book. I loved it while reading it and loved it after. BUT, as a reader who wants to read critically, I have to and want to examine the author’s intent even if that means confronting my own biases. An earlier translation of the novel, Jae Won Chung, also titled Whale, was to be published in 2016 by Dalkey Archive Press in their (rather poorly promoted) Library of Korean Literature - although this was never actually published and I am unsure if the previous translation was even completed. Geumbok's daughter is Chunhui. She's the whale-like, autistic- y, mute girl who talks to the dead or alive elephant. We like her. We don't want bad things to happen to her. Bad things happen to her. We don't know what her thoughts were and we don't know what kind of life she desired. She was different, and she lived in isolation because of that.Whilst the writing is often comedic, the tone is a philosophical one, with a twist of nostalgia and melancholy. The book is a classic in Korean literature, and this translation, though making the Booker Longlist, is not the first into English. This is the second translation of Whale into English, and this translation presents an engaging, fantastical story of memory and place in an era when society changed and evolved from slow traditional ways to the ever-increasing fast pace of modern life. Vigdis Hjorth’s Norwegian novel about a mother and child Is Mother Dead is translated by Charlotte Barslund. Susie Mesure in the Guardian said the novel was: “an absorbing study of inner turmoil that is unexpectedly gripping”. Occasionally, there comes a novel that shakes you out of your reality, places you in its reality, and makes you want to live there forever, no matter how trying the circumstances, how matter how brutal the lay of the land, and no matter how beastly some characters who inhabit that world. Whale was one such novel for me this year, and maybe for a long time to come. The heroines include an old downcast woman who struggles all her life, yet saves an enormous amount of money as revenge against all who have wronged her; a woman blinded by a vengeful mother and sold for two jars of honey to a farmer at the tender age of 13; a girl from a remote area who goes to a port to escape her father, only to be haunted by his death and driven by an overwhelming drive for business success; and finally the heroine of the story: a mute woman of unusually large size who can talk to elephants, and was wrongly imprisoned for a fire she didn’t start.

Whale will make a lot more sense if you’re familiar with modern (South) Korean history. It will be a startlingly thought-provoking read as Cheon explores this history with incredible depth through his themes and characters as allegories of the brutality and violence that South Koreans have faced throughout the twentieth century. I can see why Cheon deliberately chose women as his protagonists, though I fully recognize the discomforts that come with a male writer putting female characters in horrific situations. It’s complicated, to say the least, and I’m still trying to process how I feel about all of this. Another critic observed that Whale contains elements of han, a uniquely Korean blend of internalised rage, resentment, grief, regret and sorrow – a concept that is somehow part of the country’s DNA and has no direct English translation. Do you recognise all of those elements in the book? The book was described by the FT as a ‘distinctly Korean take on Great Expectations’. What do you think is meant by this statement, and do you agree?Ukrainian writer Andrey Kurkov, who writes fiction in Russian, is shortlisted for Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv, out at the end of April, translated by Reuben Woolley. Meanwhile Perumal Murugan, who declared himself “dead” as a writer after protests against his work, is longlisted for Pyre, translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. Whale is the English-language debut of a beloved and bestselling South Korean author, a born storyteller with a cinematic, darkly humorous, and thoroughly original perspective. The judges at the time praised the book for its “compelling story” and “skillful and tightly refined structure,” according to Publisher Munhak Dongne. The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Partners I am still reading the novel but I wanted to write a few words about it before the winner is announced Tomorrow. I think the novel has the best chances to win. I loved Boulder more but I am not sure it will win. This one epic, longer and “big” in every way, from the themes explored to the writing style and plot.

Still Born explores those aspects of motherhood that have often gone untold in uncompromising writing that feels throughout as though it’s being narrated in confidence to a close friend. I really liked Geumbok, one of the female protagonists, who had a real entrepreneurial gift. Until, that is, she fell in love with a lovely woman, transitioned to a man, and then transitioned to a drunken load. Geumbok was one shitty mother, too, worse than anything Joy Williams has so far thought up. It’s very important. Translating literature is critical work and if translators hadn’t undertaken that labour, I would have been someone who’d never had the opportunity to read Hemingway or Conan Doyle. It’s terrible to even contemplate. Whale," a story of an ambitious woman making something of herself in the world, was among the 13 preliminary nominations that were announced by the organizer on Tuesday. Cheon, Myeong-Kwan; O’Rourke, Kevin (2012). "Frank and I". Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature & Culture. 5 (1): 151–171. doi: 10.1353/aza.2012.0004. S2CID 82935983. ProjectMUSE 474441.The protagonists of the story are a series of women whose depictions both satirize and humanize the life stories of many who lived through the mid-20th century in Korea, as in Chunhui, or Girl of Spring: Charles Bukowski’s Post Office. I was already middle-aged when I read this book for the first time. I read it at a very difficult time, personally. Chinaski, the weary protagonist, is also going through a hard time. Strangely, though, I felt happy while I was reading it. Setting aside its literary significance, it was because I felt I would be able to bear it all, no matter how difficult, if I could look at the world through Bukowski’s eyes - if I could arm myself with Bukowski’s gaze to stand up against the world - and be accompanied by alcohol, too. Amanda Svensson, who is the Swedish translator of Ali Smith’s novels, is longlisted for A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding, a family saga about triplets, translated by Nichola Smalley from Swedish. Whale is a sweeping satire set in 1950s Korea at a moment in history when, thanks to the Korean War, South Korea underwent a breath-taking transformation from tradition to modernity, with all of the ‘American’ influences that came with it. The collision of cultures forms the basis of the satire as the author, while taking for granted the ‘American Dream’ almost as an inevitability, explores how this modernisation landed in Far East Asia and what the locals did with it. The Whale itself is the core symbol of this progress.

The image of a very large woman was the genesis of this novel. I was drawn to the tragedy of her enormous corporeality and began plotting out the story. I recently watched Darren Aronofsky’s film featuring a 272-kilogram man, and I was surprised to learn that the film’s title was also The Whale; it too symbolises massive physicality and loneliness.While the man with the scar—the renowned con artist, notorious smuggler, superb butcher, rake, pimp of all the prostitutes on the wharf, and hot-tempered broker—was a taciturn man, he was gregarious with Geumbok, telling her everything about himself. The stories he told her were frightening and cruel, about murder and kidnapping, conspiracy and betrayal—how he was born to an old prostitute who worked along the wharf and was raised by other prostitutes when she died during childbirth, how he grew up without knowing his father, how a smuggler who claimed to be his father appeared in his life, how he stowed away to Japan with this man, how a typhoon came upon them during the journey, how the ship capsized, how the smuggler didn’t know how to swim and flailed in the waves before sinking into the water, how he, who thankfully knew how to swim, drifted onto a beach and lost consciousness, where he was discovered by the yakuza, how he lived with them and learned to use a knife, how he killed for the first time, how he met the geisha who was his first love, how he partedways with her, how he returned home and consolidated power in this city—but she remained enthralled, as though she were watching a movie. Whale" was translated by award-winning Chi-Young Kim and released by Europa Editions on Jan. 19. The International Booker Prize was established in 2005 to honor an author and a translator for a single work of international fiction translated into English, selected from entries published in the UK or Ireland.