Whale: SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2023

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A few days after the fire, government investigators arrived. They were reminded of the horrendous scenes in the war's immediate aftermath, when entire cities vanished in flames. Pyungdae, once flourishing, was now a city of death. Smoke still rose from ruined heaps of former buildings, and though it had not completely collapsed, the ashen exterior of the theater showed just how horrifyingly intense the fire had been. Pungent smoke blanketed the town and the air quivered with the smell of burnt flesh and rotting corpses. Wails emanated from every house and scorched, unburied bodies were strewn in the streets, each attracting swarms of flies. The investigators covered their eyes and ears, confronted with the most hideous scene they had ever witnessed.

did this book have a lot of objectionable stuff in it? yes. but did i lap up this book like it was freaking ice cream? also yes. A peerless work devoted to telling a powerful story and lauded for expanding Korean literature into new dimensions.”— The Hankyoreh They chose the longlist from 134 books published between 1 May 2022 and 30 April 2023 and submitted to the prize by publishers. I didn't really know what to expect with this one but having read and enjoyed several books by Korean authors of late, I was drawn to this one and multi generational family saga's are one of my favourite type of genre.

What was left behind after the fire raged was truly gruesome. Eight hundred people died in the theater. The market next door caught fire, and the losses were astronomical. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say half of Pyeongdae burned down. It was the worst catastrophe since the war. Alina and Laura are old friends whose relationship is based on eschewing procreation as the be all and end all. It’s a perspective that gets increasingly complicated through pregnancy, birth, loss, a growing intimacy with the troubled son of a neighbour, unexpected resilience, the “birthing” process of writing a thesis and gradual drifting apart with a mother. While the man with the scar—the renowned con artist, notorious smuggler, superb butcher, rake, pimp of all the prostitutes on the wharf, and hot-tempered broker—was a taciturn man, he was gregarious with Geumbok, telling her everything about himself. The stories he told her were frightening and cruel, about murder and kidnapping, conspiracy and betrayal—how he was born to an old prostitute who worked along the wharf and was raised by other prostitutes when she died during childbirth, how he grew up without knowing his father, how a smuggler who claimed to be his father appeared in his life, how he stowed away to Japan with this man, how a typhoon came upon them during the journey, how the ship capsized, how the smuggler didn’t know how to swim and flailed in the waves before sinking into the water, how he, who thankfully knew how to swim, drifted onto a beach and lost consciousness, where he was discovered by the yakuza, how he lived with them and learned to use a knife, how he killed for the first time, how he met the geisha who was his first love, how he partedways with her, how he returned home and consolidated power in this city—but she remained enthralled, as though she were watching a movie.

Vigdis Hjorth’s Norwegian novel about a mother and child Is Mother Dead is translated by Charlotte Barslund. Susie Mesure in the Guardian said the novel was: “an absorbing study of inner turmoil that is unexpectedly gripping”. We wanted to celebrate literary ambition, panache, originality and, of course, through this, the talent of translators who have been able to convey all of this with great skill,” she added. There's a talking elephant, but in fairness, the talking elephant only talks to the mute, autistic- y, whale-looking, other female protagonist. Jumbo talks to her while alive and even when he's been killed and stuffed.Cheon Myeong-kwan’s International Booker shortlist is a classic infused with magic realism and punctuated by dried fish The list is completed by Ninth Building by Zou Jingzhi, translated by Jeremy Tiang from Chinese. It is a collection of vignettes drawn from the author’s experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution. She wasn’t obsessed with the whale just because of its size. When she saw the blue whale from the beach, she had glimpsed what eternal life looked like, life that had triumphed against death. That was the moment the fearful small-town girl became enraptured by enormous things. 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.

Slimani said the list was a “celebration of the power of language and of authors who wanted to push formal inquiry as far as possible”. This is a book where you feel very close to the narrator. You don’t leave her side for a second, you feel every emotion she describes, with an extraordinary poetic force. The novel has just two characters, the unnamed narrator and their time travelling friend Gustine. This sparsity reflects the aridity of a demented mind. Together, they create rooms for Alzheimer’s patients. Rooms in which a chunk of their familiar time and memory is preserved to provide them with shelter in a rapidly erasing memory world. Cheon Myeong-kwan has confessed that once he wrote the first chapter of ‘Whale’, the rest of the story appeared to him like listening to a voice being dictated in his ear Cheon’s sprawling, fantastical saga focuses on a mother, Geumbok, and her daughter Chunhui, whose experiences combine to form an oblique examination of the development of South Korean society in the years after the Korean War. Geumbok and Chunhui are living through a time of enormous transformations and puzzling contradictions. Geumbok, an ordinary girl from an impoverished village, through a mix of chance and skill, reinvents herself as a successful entrepreneur. She’s almost uncannily capable of grasping the opportunities on offer in an increasingly capitalist environment, while her daughter’s extraordinary size and strength, as well as an inability to speak, marks her out as a victim in South Korea’s increasingly repressive system.In one interview the author has described the novel as a revenge play. Do you agree, and if so how exactly? The conflagration was indeed horrific. Over eight hundred people perished in the fire, and even more in the market where it eventually spread. The damage was massive. It was no exaggeration to say that half of Pyungdae burned to the ground. It was the greatest tragedy since the war. A spry, cunning work of invigorated tale-telling. Cheon Myeong-kwan harnesses the ferociously erratic flow of shared narratives, embracing their natural disposition toward salacious detail at every turn.Whaleis a billowing, boundless novel. — Justin Walls, Bookshop.org It took me a couple of attempts to get going with this one and there was almost a dreamlike ( nightmarish at times) quality to the writing. I didn't always fully understand where the story was going and yet was intrigued and compelled to keep reading. Guembok was fantastic character , her ambition and determination were a joy to read. I want to visit Korea even more now after reading this and had a strong desire to cook fish when reading!