“My mother lies unconscious in the warm side of the room, dreaming of springtime in the old city of Seoul. She is walking along a palace wall, on an avenue white with fallen cherry blossoms. . . . Hearing a strange noise, she stops to listen. A giant serpent, thick as a pine tree, dangles its head from atop the palace gate and whispers to her in human speech…”

Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction; a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection; the prequel to Skull Water

Korea’s most prized literary masterpiece written in the 17th-century: a Buddhist journey questioning the illusions of human life—presented in a vivid new translation by PEN/Hemingway finalist Heinz Insu Fenkl.

Named one of the year's most anticipated books by The New York Times, The Millions, and i09

Ghost stories, legends, supernatural romances, fables, animal and trickster tales -- this is an enthralling, eminently readable collection for anyone who wants to understand the fascinating world of Korean folklore. Fenkl's wonderful retellings conjure the dreams and visions of a rich cultural legacy infused with drama, mystery, humor, and poignant human dilemmas. What Italo Calvino did for Italian folktales and Jack Zipes did for Grimms' fairy tales in America, master storyteller Heinz Insu Fenkl achieves for Korean folklore.

A collection of prose poems by Musan Cho Oh-hyun (1932–2018), celebrated poet-monk of the Nine Mountain school of Korean Zen.

In this collection of prose poems, Musan Cho Oh-hyun, renowned abbot of Baekdamsa, one of Korea’s central Zen temples, innovates on a millenia-old Buddhist literary tradition going back to Buddhist classics like the Biographies of Eminent Monks. Tales from the Temple not only presents instructive and amusing anecdotes from the lives of famous monistics from Korea, Japan, and China, it also depicts the lives and concerns of the common people―undertakers, fish mongers, fishermen, blacksmiths, and farmers―in a way that critiques social hierarchy and particularly monastic pride.

Fenkl’s Cathay is a complex interweaving of fiction, translation, scholarship, and transformative writing. It includes new translations of the three luminaries of Tang Dynasty poetry: Li Po, Tu Fu, and Wang Wei—but that is only to whet the appetite. The volume also features the opening of the seventeenth-century Korean Buddhist classic, The Nine Cloud Dream, by Kim Man-jung; an emulation of a horrific yet transcendent Tang Dynasty chuanji (“strange tale”); a magical, and yet postcolonial, revisioning of Hans Christian Andersen’s nineteenth-century fairytale, “The Nightingale”; and the enchanting story of the Shakyamuni Buddha’s conception and birth. The scope and depth of Fenkl’s achievement are astonishing. A simultaneous tribute to and criticism of Ezra Pound’s history-making 1915 chapbook of the same title, Fenkl’s Cathay is destined to be a literary classic.

Since the 1930s, Korean American writers have come to maintain an important place in our national literature, publishing some of the most exciting fiction of the twentieth century. The stories in this first anthology of Korean American fiction represent the very best work of these writers, including several pieces published for the first time.

Contributors include Patti Kim, Chang-rae Lee, Susan Choi, Ty Pak, Leonard Chang, Nora Okja Keller, and Richard E. Kim.

Though North Korea holds the attention of the world, it is still rare for us to hear North Korean voices, beyond those few who have escaped. Known only by his pen name, the poet and author 'Bandi' stands as one of the most distinctive and original dissident writers to emerge from the country, and his work is all the more striking for the fact that he continues to reside in North Korea, writing in secret, with his work smuggled out of the country by supporters and relatives.

The Red Years represents the first collection of Bandi's poetry to be made available in English. As he did in his first work The Accusation, Bandi here gives us a rare glimpse into everyday life and survival in North Korea. Singularly poignant and evocative, The Red Years stands as a testament to the power of the human spirit to endure and resist even the most repressive of regimes.

For Nirvana features exceptional examples of the poet Cho Oh-Hyun's award-winning work. Cho Oh-Hyun was born in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, Korea, and has lived in retreat in the mountains since becoming a novice monk at the age of seven. Writing under the Buddhist name Musan, he has composed hundreds of poems in seclusion, many in the sijo style, a relatively fixed syllabic poetic form similar to Japanese haiku and tanka. For Nirvana contains 108 Zen sijo poems (108 representing the number of klesas, or "defilements," that one must overcome to attain enlightenment). These transfixing works play with traditional religious and metaphysical themes and include a number of "story" sijo, a longer, more personal style that is one of Cho Oh-Hyun's major innovations. Kwon Youngmin, a leading scholar of sijo, provides a contextualizing introduction, and in his afterword, Heinz Insu Fenkl reflects on the unique challenges of translating the collection.

Translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl and Yoosup Chang, Meeting with My Brother represents the political and psychological complexity of Koreans on both sides of the border, offering a complex yet poignant perspective on the divisions between the two countries. Through a series of charged conversations, Yi explores the nuances of reunification, both political and personal. This semiautobiographical account draws on Yi's own experience of growing up with an absent father who defected to the North and the stigma of family disloyalty. First published in Korea in 1994, Meeting with My Brother is a moving and illuminating portrait of the relationships sundered by one of the world's starkest barriers.