Staff Pick
After years of emotional isolation, Hon is finally learning the whole truth about her father, her siblings, and the family's financial hardships
What we see Hon learn is not only a picture of her father and her family but a much larger portrait of a generation and gives a much better look at the scope of their sacrifice and heroism. Through this family and Shin’s beautifully detailed writing, a window is opened for us to look at family, grief, war, and what it truly means to be human. Shin’s writing is once again a beautiful yet heartbreaking reminder that the past is never as far behind us as we think it is Recommended By Aster A., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
An instant bestseller in Korea and the follow up to the international bestseller, Please Look After Mom; centering on a woman's efforts to reconnect with her aging father, uncovering long-held family secrets.
Two years after losing her daughter in a tragic accident, Hon finally returns to her home in the countryside to take care of her father. At first, her father only appears withdrawn and fragile, an aging man, awkward but kind around his own daughter. Then, after stumbling upon a chest of letters, Hon discovers the truth of her father's past and reconstructs her own family history.
Consumed with her own grief, Hon had been blind to her father's vulnerability and her family's fragility. Unraveling secret after secret and thanks to conversations with loving family and friends, Hon grows closer to her father, who proves to be more complex than she ever gave him credit for. After living through one of the most tumultuous times in Korean history, her father's life was once vibrant and ambitious, but spiraled during the postwar years. Now, after years of emotional isolation, Hon learns the whole truth, from her father's affair and involvement in a religious sect, to the dynamic lives of her own siblings, to her family's financial hardships.
What Hon uncovers about her father builds towards her understanding of the great scope of his sacrifice and heroism, and of his generation as a whole. More than just the portrait of a single man, I Went to See My Father opens a window onto humankind, family, loss, and war. With this long-awaited follow-up to Please Look After Mom--flawlessly rendered by award-winning translator Anton Hur — Kyung-Sook Shin has crafted an ambitious, global, epic, and lasting novel.
Review
"A book that makes you hurt all over, and yet smile at the same time. A book where the experience being shared is so immediately palpable, so universal yet Korean, and beautiful and powerful at the same time." — Kim Hyesoon, award-winning author of Autobiography of Death
Review
"Gentle yet piercing...[I Went to See My Father is a] sensitively crafted family portrait that's both specific and universal and, above all, humane." — Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Once more, Shin masterfully glides between quotidian details and astounding feats of survival revealed through multiple voices...to create another universally empathic masterpiece." — Booklist (Starred Review)
About the Author
Kyung-Sook Shin is one of South Korea's most widely read and acclaimed novelists. She has been awarded the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Dong-in Literary Award, the Man Asian Literary Prize, and many others. Shin is the author of 8 novels, 8 short story collections, and 3 essay collections, including the NYT-bestselling Please Look After Mom, which has been published in more than forty countries.
Anton Hur was double-longlisted and shortlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize and has worked on several of Kyung-Sook Shin's books. He lives in Seoul.