The End of August
Yu Miri, Morgan Giles (translation)°°°
An extraordinary, ground-breaking, epic multi-generational novel about a Korean family living under Japanese occupation.
In 1930s Japanese-occupied Korea, Lee Woo-Cheol was a running prodigy & a contender for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. But he would have had to run under the Japanese flag.Nearly a century later, his granddaughter is living in Japan & training to run a marathon herself. With the help of powerful Korean shamans, she summons the spirit of Lee Woo-Cheol only to be immersed in the memories of her grandfather, his brother, Lee Woo-Gun, & their neighbour, a young teen who was tricked into becoming a comfort woman for Japanese soldiers.
A meditative dance of generations, The End of August is a semi-autobiographical investigation into nationhood & family - what you are born into & what is imposed. Yu Miri’s distinct prose, rhythmically translated by Morgan Giles, explores the minutiae of generational trauma, shedding light on the postwar migration of Koreans to Japan.
°°°
A Japanese author of Korean descent, Yu Miri is the winner of Japan's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa, & her novels have been bestsellers, including the National Book Award-winning Tokyo Ueno Station. After the 2011 earthquake & tsunami, she relocated to Fukushima, the site of the disaster, where she currently hosts a radio show interviewing survivors.
Morgan Giles is a translator of Japanese fiction. Her translation of Yu Miri's Tokyo Ueno Station won the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature.