‘Enigmatic, beguiling… This finely crafted debut explores topics of identity and heredity in compelling fashion. ’ - Guardian Top 10 Best New Books in Translation ‘A masterful short novel’ - New Statesman ‘Beautifully translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins, comes together slowly, like a Polaroid photo, its effects both intimate and foreign. Elisa Shua Dusapin’s voice is distinctive and unmistakable.

As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.Īn exquisitely-crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, Winter in Sokcho is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows – the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an ‘authentic’ Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. Shortlisted for The Scott Moncreiff Prize 2021Īs if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman – a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

Winter in sokcho by elisa shua dusapin