SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE 2023
"A DISTINCTLY KOREAN TAKE ON GREAT EXPECTATIONS." Financial Times
A woman sells her daughter to a passing beekeeper for two jars of honey. A baby weighing fifteen pounds is born in the depths of winter but named “Girl of Spring”. A storm brings down the roof of a ramshackle restaurant to reveal a hidden fortune. These are just some of the events that set Myeong-Kwan's beautifully crafted, wild world in motion.
Set in a remote village in South Korea, Whale follows the lives of its linked characters: Geumbok, who has been chasing an indescribable thrill ever since she first saw a whale crest in the ocean; her mute daughter, Chunhui, who communicates with elephants; and a one-eyed woman who controls honeybees with a whistle.
Brimming with surprises and wicked humour, Whale is an adventure-satire of epic proportions, by one of international literature’s the most original voices.
"In recent years East Asia has usurped Latin America as the lodestar of magic realism… Cheon Myeong-kwan’s Whale, a novel of tycoons, ghosts and cinephiles that was first published in South Korea in 2003 and has now been translated into English by Chi-Young Kim, rides the crest of this wave… Told in an omniscient and playful narrative voice, smoothly translated by Chi-Young, this is a distinctly Korean take on Great Expectations, a tale of aspiration and folly punctuated with artisanal bricks and dried fish." ― Financial Times
"A lesson in magical realism, weaving together riotous tales of secret treasure, a giant baby and people who speak to elephants... Fast paced and cinematic."― Monocle
"A rich, fantastical tale..... unique and ambitious."― Buzz Magazine
“Funny and light while also deeply philosophical and sensual.”― Asian Review of Books
"In tying together a series of fun, related anecdotes, Cheon cleverly spins a fantastical tale that also contains some unpalatable truths about not-so-distant Korean history – and that’s without even mentioning the man with the scar, the brickyard and the titular whale of a building."― Tony's Reading List
"A kaleidoscope of interlocking stories, all painted larger than life." ― David's Book World
"A peerless work devoted to telling a powerful story and lauded for expanding Korean literature into new dimensions." ― The Hankyoreh
"A novel that seduces." ― JoongAng Ilbo
"[Whale] redefines what fiction can be." ― The Kyunghyang Sinmun
"Whale overflows with freshness. That's what makes it special." ― OhmyNews
“Fast-paced and imaginative.”-- Dennis Maloney ― Modern Family
“Whale has leaped over the boundaries of a novel and entered a new space, just like South American fiction.”-- Shin Soo-jung (South Korean film star)
"There has never been a novel like this in Korean literature...A novel that's more like reading out loud than reading quietly to oneself; its structure is like that of a folktale. You can feel the oral tradition in the rhythm of the sentences." ― Lee Dong-jin, critic
“Whale is a book that hooks you by the nose. It floods your senses with a certain voluptuous intensity alternating with the pungent odour of dried fish and human desire in all its manifold variations.”― The Hindu
