As if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman - a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author\nIt’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.\nThe two form an uneasy relationship. 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. 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. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.\nAn 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. Elisa Shua Duspain’s voice is distinctive and unmistakable.

Winter In Sokcho

Shua Dusapin, Elisa

Daunt Books Publishing

2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER FOR TRANSLATED LITERATURE\nAs if Marguerite Duras wrote Convenience Store Woman—a beautiful, unexpected novel from a debut French Korean author 
It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape. 
The two form an uneasy relationship. 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. 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. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.\nAn 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. Elisa Shua Dusapin’s voice is distinctive and unmistakable.

Winter in Sokcho

Literature & Fiction

Literary

Open Letter

Review\n"A book full of delicacy and melancholy . . . sprinkled with meticulous touches."–Le Monde\nFrom the author of Winter in Sokcho, Winner of the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature. 
The days are beginning to draw in. The sky is dark by seven in the evening. I lie on the floor and gaze out of the window. Women’s calves, men’s shoes, heels trodden down by the weight of bodies borne for too long. 
It is summer in Tokyo. Claire finds herself dividing her time between tutoring twelve-year-old Mieko, in an apartment in an abandoned hotel, and lying on the floor at her grandparents’: daydreaming, playing Tetris, and listening to the sounds from the street above. The heat rises; the days slip by. 
The plan is for Claire to visit Korea with her grandparents. They fled the civil war there over fifty years ago, along with thousands of others, and haven’t been back since. When they first arrived in Japan, they opened Shiny, a pachinko parlor. Shiny is still open, drawing people in with its bright, flashing lights and promises of good fortune. And as Mieko and Claire gradually bond, a tender relationship growing, Mieko’s determination to visit the pachinko parlor builds. 
The Pachinko Parlor is a nuanced and beguiling exploration of identity and otherness, unspoken histories, and the loneliness you can feel among family. Crisp and enigmatic, Shua Dusapin’s writing glows with intelligence.

Pachinko Parlor

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Books by Shua Dusapin, Elisa

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shua Dusapin, Elisa. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Winter In Sokcho

Winter in Sokcho

Pachinko Parlor