Author Photo © Park Jae-hong
"A memorable existential tale." —Publishers Weekly
An atmospheric, melancholic novel about a successful sculptor who decides to commit suicide by artfully preparing and deliberately eating a lethal dish of blowfish, Kyung-Ran Jo's Blowfish is a postmodern novel in four parts, alternating between the respective stories of a female sculptor and a male architect. The narrative loosely approximates a love story, but this is no romance in the normal sense. For the woman, the man is a pitstop on the road to her own suicide. For the man, the woman forestalls death and offers him a final chance. Through the conflicting impressions they have of one another, the characters look back on their lives; it is only the desire to create art that calls them back from death.
Evoking the heterogeneous urban spaces of Seoul and Tokyo, Blowfish delves into the inner life of a woman contemplating her failures in love and art. Jo’s fierce will to write animates the novel; the lethal taste of blowfish, which one cannot help but eat even though one may die in doing so, approximates the inexorable pains of writing a novel.
In this episode of Author Talks, Jo discusses her career in Korea and the English translation of her novel.
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Author Talks: Kyung-Ran Jo
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017
About the Speaker:
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Kyung-Ran Jo made her literary debut in 1996 when her short story “The French Optical” won the Dong-a Ilbo New Writer’s Contest. She is the author of five story collections and three novels. Her novel Tongue was published in English by Bloomsbury in 2009. She is also the recipient of the Hyundae Munhak Award and the Dongin Prize, among others. |
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