E-Books →Patterns of the Heart and Other Stories

Patterns of the Heart and Other Stories presents a selection of Ch'oe's short fiction in translation, including later works from hard-to-find North Korean publications. These cinematic, keenly observed tales explore Pyongyang in meticulous detail, depicting the city's transformations and the conflicts between old and new. They pay close attention to the lives of the disaffected and the marginalized: a drifter confronts a former revolutionary dying of opium addiction; a sex worker is trafficked across the border aboard a train, amid the indifference of her fellow passengers. Later stories provide a striking glimpse of the Korean War-the occupation of Pyongyang, U.S. fighter jets bombing civilian refugees, guerrilla heroics-from a North Korean perspective. Hidden treasures of world literature, these stories offer new perspectives on Korea's turbulent twentieth century, across political divides still in place today.
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