Your Republic Is Calling You
Your Republic Is Calling You

Author: Young-ha Kim

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2010-09-28

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0547546971

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This psychological thriller of a North Korean spy living in Seoul is “perhaps the most intriguing and accomplished Korean fiction yet to appear in English” (Kirkus). Foreign film importer Kim Ki-Yong is a family man with a wife and daughter. Living a prosperous life in Seoul, South Korea, he’s an aficionado of Heineken, soccer, and sushi. But he is also a North Korean spy who has been living among his enemies for twenty-one years. Then, after more than a decade of silence from the home office, he receives a mysterious email stating that he has one day to return to headquarters. But is the message really from Pyongyang—or has he been discovered? And if the message is real, is he being called home to receive new orders or to be executed for a lack of diligence? Spanning the course of a single day, Your Republic Is Calling You delves deep into a gripping family secret to ask whether we ever truly know the people we love. Mining the political and cultural transformations of South Korea since the 1980s, author Young-ha Kim confronts moral questions on small and large scales. “This intense novel’s bristling plot—confined to the events of a single day—ironically echoes that of Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses.”—Kirkus

Your Republic is Calling You
Your Republic is Calling You

Author: Young-ha Kim

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9780151015450

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North Korean spy Gi-yeong, who has been living undercover in South Korea with his wife and daughter, leaves his job as foreign film importer to travel to the North after he is suddently called back to headquarters after twenty-one years.

I'll Be Right There
I'll Be Right There

Author: Kyung-Sook Shin

Publisher: Other Press, LLC

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 1590516745

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“A love story between friends. It is so well written. [Kyung-sook Shin] has this use of language that is just beautiful and poetic. It’s a great book if you’re looking to escape.” —Chelsea Handler, #1 New York Times bestselling author How friendship, European literature, and a charismatic professor defy war, oppression, and the absurd Set in 1980s South Korea amid the tremors of political revolution, I’ll Be Right There follows Jung Yoon, a highly literate, twenty-something woman, as she recounts her tragic personal history as well as those of her three intimate college friends. When Yoon receives a distressing phone call from her ex-boyfriend after eight years of separation, memories of a tumultuous youth begin to resurface, forcing her to re-live the most intense period of her life. With profound intellectual and emotional insight, she revisits the death of her beloved mother, the strong bond with her now-dying former college professor, the excitement of her first love, and the friendships forged out of a shared sense of isolation and grief. Yoon’s formative experiences, which highlight both the fragility and force of personal connection in an era of absolute uncertainty, become immediately palpable. Shin makes the foreign and esoteric utterly familiar: her use of European literature as an interpreter of emotion and experience bridges any gaps between East and West. Love, friendship, and solitude are the same everywhere, as this book makes poignantly clear.

Black Flower
Black Flower

Author: Young-ha Kim

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2012-10-30

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0547698364

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In 1904, a group of Koreans seeks a new life in Mexico, in this “powerful, sweeping” novel based on a little-known chapter in history (List Magazine). In 1904, facing war and the loss of their nation, more than a thousand Koreans leave their homes for the promise of land in unknown Mexico. After a long sea voyage, these emigrants—thieves and royals, priests and soldiers, orphans and families—discover that they have been sold into indentured servitude. Aboard the ship, the orphan Ijeong falls in love with a nobleman’s daughter. When the hacendados claim their laborers and the two are separated, he vows to find her. But after years of working in the punishing heat of the henequen fields, the Koreans are caught in the midst of a Mexican revolution . . . A tale of star-crossed love, political turmoil, and the dangers of seeking freedom in a new world—from an author who is “at the leading edge of a new breed of South Korean writers”—Black Flower is an epic story based on a little-known moment in history (Philadelphia City Paper). “‘Can a nation disappear forever?’ . . . [In] a tale of collective loss, political revolution and the individual quest for self-determination . . . Kim brings us the souls caught up on the ground of this larger drama.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Spare and beautiful.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “Readers who remember the historical fiction of Thomas B. Costain, Zoe Oldenbourg [sic] and Anya Seton will appreciate [Kim’s] extensive research and empathic imagination.” —Kirkus Reviews

Call Me by Your Name
Call Me by Your Name

Author: André Aciman

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2008-01-22

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0374707723

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Now a Major Motion Picture from Director Luca Guadagnino, Starring Armie Hammer and Timothée Chalamet, and Written by Three-Time OscarTM Nominee James Ivory The Basis of the Oscar-Winning Best Adapted Screenplay A New York Times Bestseller A USA Today Bestseller A Los Angeles Times Bestseller A Vulture Book Club Pick An Instant Classic and One of the Great Love Stories of Our Time Andre Aciman's Call Me by Your Name is the story of a sudden and powerful romance that blossoms between an adolescent boy and a summer guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Italian Riviera. Each is unprepared for the consequences of their attraction, when, during the restless summer weeks, unrelenting currents of obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion and test the charged ground between them. Recklessly, the two verge toward the one thing both fear they may never truly find again: total intimacy. It is an instant classic and one of the great love stories of our time. Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Ficition A New York Times Notable Book of the Year • A Publishers Weekly and The Washington Post Best Book of the Year • A New York Magazine "Future Canon" Selection • A Chicago Tribune and Seattle Times (Michael Upchurch's) Favorite Favorite Book of the Year

I Have the Right to Destroy Myself
I Have the Right to Destroy Myself

Author: Young-ha Kim

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2007-07-02

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 0547540531

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A “mesmerizing” novel of a love triangle and a mysterious disappearance in South Korea (Booklist). In the fast-paced, high-urban landscape of Seoul, C and K are brothers who have fallen in love with the same beguiling drifter, Se-yeon, who gives herself freely to both of them. Then, just as they are trying desperately to forge a connection in an alienated world, Se-yeon suddenly disappears. All the while, a spectral, calculating narrator haunts the edges of their lives, working to help the lost and hurting find escape through suicide. When Se-yeon reemerges, it is as the narrator’s new client. Recalling the emotional tension of Milan Kundera and the existential anguish of Bret Easton Ellis, I Have the Right to Destroy Myself is a dreamlike “literary exploration of truth, death, desire and identity” (Publishers Weekly). Cinematic in its urgency, the novel offers “an atmosphere of menacing ennui [set] to a soundtrack of Leonard Cohen tunes” (Newark Star-Ledger). “Kim’s novel is art built upon art. His style is reminiscent of Kafka’s and also relies on images of paintings (Jacques-Louis David’s ‘The Death of Marat,’ Gustav Klimt’s ‘Judith’) and film (Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Stranger Than Paradise’). The philosophy—life is worthless and small—reminds us of Camus and Sartre, risky territory for a young writer. . . . But Kim has the advantage of the urban South Korean landscape. Fast cars, sex with lollipops and weather fronts from Siberia lend a unique flavor to good old-fashioned nihilism. Think of it as Korean noir.” —Los Angeles Times “Like Georges Simenon, [Kim’s] keen engagement with human perversity yields an abundance of thrills as well as chills (and, for good measure, a couple of memorable laughs). This is a real find.” —Han Ong, author of Fixer Chao

From Crisis to Calling
From Crisis to Calling

Author: Sasha Chanoff

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2016-06-06

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 1626564515

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Making the Hardest Decisions As a young aid worker, Sasha Chanoff was sent to evacuate a group of refugees from the violence-torn Congo. But when he arrived he discovered a second group. Evacuating them too could endanger the entire mission. But leaving them behind would mean their certain death. All leaders face defining moments, when values are in conflict and decisions impact lives. Why is moral courage the essential factor at such times? How do we access our own rock-bottom values, and how can we take advantage of them to make the best decisions? Through Sasha's own extraordinary story and those of eight other brave leaders from business, government, nongovernment organizations, and the military, this book reveals five principles for confronting crucial decisions and inspires all of us to use our moral core as a lodestar for leadership.

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

Author: Bradley K. Martin

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2007-04-01

Total Pages: 912

ISBN-13: 1429906995

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Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader offers in-depth portraits of North Korea's two ruthless and bizarrely Orwellian leaders, Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il. Lifting North Korea's curtain of self-imposed isolation, this book will take readers inside a society, that to a Westerner, will appear to be from another planet. Subsisting on a diet short on food grains and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctrinated from birth to follow unquestioningly a father-son team of megalomaniacs. To North Koreans, the Kims are more than just leaders. Kim Il-Sung is the country's leading novelist, philosopher, historian, educator, designer, literary critic, architect, general, farmer, and ping-pong trainer. Radios are made so they can only be tuned to the official state frequency. "Newspapers" are filled with endless columns of Kim speeches and propaganda. And instead of Christmas, North Koreans celebrate Kim's birthday--and he presents each child a present, just like Santa. The regime that the Kim Dynasty has built remains technically at war with the United States nearly a half century after the armistice that halted actual fighting in the Korean War. This fascinating and complete history takes full advantage of a great deal of source material that has only recently become available (some from archives in Moscow and Beijing), and brings the reader up to the tensions of the current day. For as this book will explain, North Korea appears more and more to be the greatest threat among the Axis of Evil countries--with some defector testimony warning that Kim Jong-Il has enough chemical weapons to wipe out the entire population of South Korea.

It Calls You Back
It Calls You Back

Author: Luis J. Rodriguez

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-07-03

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 141658417X

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Shares the author's story of his brushes with the law and addictions to heroin and alcohol, tracing his complicated journey toward a recovery marked by a run for political office and his rise to an internationally respected gang interventionist.

Samsung Rising
Samsung Rising

Author: Geoffrey Cain

Publisher: Crown Currency

Published: 2020-03-17

Total Pages: 418

ISBN-13: 1101907266

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An explosive exposé of Samsung that “reads like a dynastic thriller, rolling through three generations of family intrigue, embezzlement, bribery, corruption, prostitution, and other bad behavior” (The Wall Street Journal). LONGLISTED FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND MCKINSEY BUSINESS BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD Based on years of reporting on Samsung for The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and Time, from his base in South Korea, and his countless sources inside and outside the company, Geoffrey Cain offers a penetrating look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody in America knows. Seen for decades in tech circles as a fast follower rather than an innovation leader, Samsung today has grown to become a market leader in the United States and around the globe. They have captured one quarter of the smartphone market and have been pushing the envelope on every front. Forty years ago, Samsung was a rickety Korean agricultural conglomerate that produced sugar, paper, and fertilizer, located in a backward country with a third-world economy. With the rise of the PC revolution, though, Chairman Lee Byung-chul began a bold experiment: to make Samsung a major supplier of computer chips. The multimillion- dollar plan was incredibly risky. But Lee, wowed by a young Steve Jobs, who sat down with the chairman to offer his advice, became obsessed with creating a tech empire. And in Samsung Rising, we follow Samsung behind the scenes as the company fights its way to the top of tech. It is one of Apple’s chief suppliers of technology critical to the iPhone, and its own Galaxy phone outsells the iPhone. Today, Samsung employs over 300,000 people (compared to Apple’s 80,000 and Google’s 48,000). The company’s revenues have grown more than forty times from that of 1987 and make up more than 20 percent of South Korea’s exports. Yet their disastrous recall of the Galaxy Note 7, with numerous reports of phones spontaneously bursting into flames, reveals the dangers of the company’s headlong attempt to overtake Apple at any cost. A sweeping insider account, Samsung Rising shows how a determined and fearless Asian competitor has become a force to be reckoned with.