{"product_id":"the-old-garden-isbn-9781583228999","title":"The Old Garden","description":"Political prisoner Hyun Woo is freed after eighteen years to find no trace of the world he knew. The friends with whom he shared utopianist dreams are gone. His Seoul is unrecognizably transformed and aggressively modernized. Yoon Hee, the woman he loved, died three years ago. A broken man, he drifts toward a small house in Kalmoe, where he and Yoon Hee once stole a few fleeting months of happiness while fleeing the authorities. In the company of her diaries, he relives and reviews his life, trying to find meaning in the revolutionary struggle that consumed their youth—a youth of great energy and optimism, victim to implacable history.\u003cbr\u003eHyun Woo weighs the worth of his own life, spent in prison, and that of the strong-willed artist Yoon Hee, whose involvement in rebel groups took her to Berlin and the fall of the wall. With great poignancy, Hwang Sok-yong grapples with the immortal questions—the endurance of love, the price of a commitment to causes—while depicting a generation that sacrificed youth, liberty, and often life, for the dream of a better tomorrow.\"Hwang  Sok-yong has given contemporary world literature a beautiful gift.  Written in a voice that is utterly humanistic, \u003ci\u003eThe Old Garden\u003c\/i\u003e combines  multiple narratives that resonate on the levels of the historical,  political, and aesthetic. Hwang's masterful command of the novelistic  form is evident in his ability to be simultaneously intimate and  worldly. Without a doubt, \u003ci\u003eThe Old Garden\u003c\/i\u003e will be seen as the definitive  novel of Korea's Gwangju generation.\" \u003cb\u003e—Jeff Shroeder, guitarist for the Smashing Pumpkins and English PhD candidate at UCLA\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Hwang Sok-yong is undoubtedly the most powerful voice of the novel in East Asia.” \u003cb\u003e–Nobel laureate Kenzaburō Ōe\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Old Garden\u003c\/i\u003e vividly depicts the tumult of Korean history and the individuals caught in its demands. Hwang Sok-yong, one of South Korea's most important modern writers, poignantly shows us that history is also a story of how individuals live, love, and sacrifice in the tumult of time.” \u003cb\u003e–Krys Lee, author of Drifting House\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Hwang Sok-yong is the most committed, politically active writer of all those who have been translated from the Korean in recent years.” \u003cb\u003e–Liberation\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Hwang Sok-yong is one of South Korea's preeminent authors.” \u003cb\u003e–Der Spiegel\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eHWANG SOK-YONG\u003c\/b\u003e is one of the contemporary masters of Korean literature. His work, which grapples with the troubled history of his divided country, has resulted in his imprisonment, his exile, and the rare achievement of a wide international readership. Hwang’s novels in English include\u003ci\u003eThe Old Garden\u003c\/i\u003e, a tragic love story set against the backdrop of the end of the Cold War and South Korea's political revolution of the eighties; \u003ci\u003eThe Guest\u003c\/i\u003e, based on the true account of a violent clash between Communist and Christian neighbors in a Korean village town; and \u003ci\u003eThe Shadow of Arms\u003c\/i\u003e, inspired by his experience as a Korean soldier in the Vietnam War. Some of his recent bestsellers in Korea, where Hwang is among that country’s most popular writers, include\u003ci\u003eBaridegi\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003ePrincess Bari\u003c\/i\u003e) and \u003ci\u003eGaebapbaragibyeol\u003c\/i\u003e (\u003ci\u003eThe Evening Star\u003c\/i\u003e), a coming of age novel that Hwang wrote as a blog.","brand":"Seven Stories Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305035485413,"sku":"NP9781583228999","price":30.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781583228999.jpg?v=1767740784","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-old-garden-isbn-9781583228999","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}