Chinatown

Author: Jung-hee, Oh

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 17 July 2025 by Penguin Books Ltd (Penguin Classics) in the United Kingdom as part of 'the Penguin Modern Classics' series.

Paperback / softback | 112 pages
179 x 112 x 13 | 88g

A selection of the best short stories by Oh Jung-hee, one of South Korea’s most influential writersIn this emblematic selection of her stories, Oh Jung-hee probes beneath the surface of seemingly quotidian lives to expose nightmarish family configurations warped by desertion, psychosis, and death. In ‘Chinatown’ a young girl living on the edge of the city’s Chinese community comes of age among mundane violences, collisions with adult sexuality and the American occupation; in ‘The Garden Party’ a woman grapples with her conflicting identities of wife, mother and writer at an alcohol-fuelled gathering. Throughout a career spanning six decades, Oh Jung-hee has drawn comparisons to Alice Munro, Virginia Woolf, and Joyce Carol Oates, and is assuredly a trailblazing writer.