In one interview the author has described the novel as a revenge play. Do you agree, and if so how exactly? You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here. I'd like to invite publishers to put trigger warnings to this novel, however, for it is very graphic in terms of violence, sexual abuse, tragic events, etc. Some themes I know could disturb more than one reader. We get very attached to the character of Pascal, this magnificent prophet who at the beginning is not aware that he has been chosen. It is precisely his innocence and even his naivety that make him such a touching character. Pascal is a messiah free of all dogmatism who fights racism, inequality and echoes the injustices of our world. Unlike Peake, who could only command a cult following, Kwan’s novel holds you in thrall. It will not be giving anything away to describe how there is even a Disney-style elephant called Jumbo, retired from a circus travelling through Korea, who communicates with Geumbok’s verbally-challenged daughter Chunhui. In one of the more lyrical passages, Jumbo points out the fragile blue marble of planet Earth of Carl Sagan’s imagery, floating through space.

It took about 10 months. The bulk of the work happened in 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, and it was a relief to immerse myself in Mr. Cheon’s world. Generally I read a book once through when I’m deciding whether to translate it, then translate it from the beginning. My first draft includes notes and queries for myself. Then I refine and edit over many drafts. Whale was first published in Korean in 2004 – a year before the International Booker Prize was even established. Almost 20 years later, during which time it has been widely regarded as a modern classic in South Korea, the English translation of Cheon Myeong-kwan’s debut has found a whole new audience. ‘It has been so long, almost 20 years, since I wrote the book, that I have nearly forgotten about it,’ Cheon told the Korea Herald when longlisted. A much shorter translation process can be found in Time Shelter, which translator Angela Rodel began work on before Georgi Gospodinov had even finished writing the book in its original language, Bulgarian. Due to the success of Gospodinov’s previous work, drafts of the work-in-progress novel were such hot property that Rodel begin translating it before she even had the chance to read it in full. This novel – taking on the knottiest questions about agency, motherhood, the precariousness of the body – exerts a magnetic force; the choices and fates of its characters feel as real as life.What was the experience of working with Cheon Myeong-kwan like? How closely did you work together? Was it a very collaborative process? Were there any surprising moments during your collaboration, or joyful moments, or challenges? This same sensation animates Rosalind Harvey’s delicate but enthrallingly tense translation of Guadalupe Nettel’s fourth novel: an exploration of maternity, loss and refusal.

University of Aberdeen, University of Birmingham, University of Bristol, and University of Sheffield provide funding as founding partners of The Conversation UK. One of the narrator's favourite refrains after an instructive passage is "That was the law of ..." and the list of Laws quoted gives a good flavour of the novel: This was the first book I’ve ever translated where I didn’t reach out to the author during the process. I literally had zero questions for him! It’s funny how Mr. Cheon says he wrote the book as if someone were dictating it to him, because translating it was a similar experience. Something about the narrative and the tone and the characters felt so familiar to me. I was reminded of my grandmother, who told me all kinds of folk tales and stories when I was young, as well as the Korean books I loved growing up. It felt comfortable, like home.

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