The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness

　　The highly anticipated release of the most personal novel by Kyung-Sook Shin, who first burst on to the literary scene with the New York Times bestseller, Please Look After Mom.

　　Homesick and alone, a teen-aged girl has just arrived in Seoul to work in a factory. Her family, still in the countryside, is too impoverished to keep sending her to school, so she works long, sun-less days on a stereo-assembly line, struggling through night school every evening in order to achieve her dream of becoming a writer.

　　Korea’s brightest literary star sets this complex and nuanced coming-of-age story against the backdrop of Korea’s industrial sweatshops of the 1970’s and takes on the extreme exploitation, oppression, and urbanization that helped catapult Korea’s economy out of the ashes of war. But it was girls like Shin’s heroine who formed the bottom of Seoul’s rapidly changing social hierarchy, forgotten and ignored.

　　Richly autobiographical, The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness lays bare the conflict and confusion Shin faces as she confronts her past and the sweeping social change of the past half-century. Cited in Korea as one of the most important literary novels of the decade, this novel cements Shin’s legacy as one of the most insightful and exciting writers of her generation.

作者簡介

2011年亞洲文學最高榮譽英仕曼亞洲文學獎得主／申京淑

　　畢業於韓國首爾藝術大學文藝創作系，擅長以深刻獨特的視角探索人的內心世界，以象徵和隱喻捕捉事物的細微動態，從人生的試煉與痛苦延伸出精緻且感人的敘事，以擴大她的作品世界，長久以來深受讀者與評論界關注。

　　《請照顧我媽媽》在台灣出版後，深深打動三萬多名讀者。吳念真導演也感動表示，申京淑特有的細膩，有如一面鏡子，彷彿可以看到自己的故事。

　　在最新的長篇小說《我們不要忘記今天》，申京淑想對讀者說：「在通過人生的某時期我們會遇到充實感不足感，也會遇到無法安撫的不安與孤獨的許多個時刻，我希望這部小說能成為撫摸這些時刻的手，能成為渴望被抓住的手。」

　　獲獎紀錄
　　1985 《冬季寓言》榮獲「文藝中央新人文學獎」
　　1993 《風琴曾經在那兒》榮獲韓國日報文學獎、文化部當代青年藝術家獎
　　1995 《深深的憂傷》榮獲現代文學獎
　　1996 《單人房》榮獲萬海文學獎
　　1997 榮獲第28屆東仁文學獎
　　2000 榮獲第5屆二十一世紀文學獎
　　2001 榮獲第25屆李箱文學獎
　　2006 榮獲吳永壽文學獎
　　2007 榮獲美國作家協會翻譯基金會獎金
　　2009《單人房》於法國翻譯出版，榮獲法國Prix de l’Inaperu
　　2010《請照顧我媽媽》創下韓國史上兩百萬本空前紀錄
　　　　　票選為韓國年度代表作家，譽為「韓國文學走向世界的墊腳石」
　　　　　受邀至美國哥倫比亞大學擔任訪問學者
　　2011《請照顧我媽媽》於全球34個國家出版
　　　　　攻占紐約時報、美國亞馬遜書店排行榜
　　　　　榮獲台灣誠品、博客來、金石堂年度十大小說
　　2012亞洲文學最高榮譽英仕曼亞洲文學獎公布2011年得主，
　　　　申京淑擊敗呼聲頗高的吉本芭娜娜，
　　　　成為第一位獲獎的女性作家。

　 　Kyung-Sook Shin is one of South Korea’s most widely read and acclaimed novelists. She is the author of I’ll Be Right There and Please Look After Mom, which was a New York Times bestseller and a Man Asian Literary Prize winner.

　　Ha-Yun Jung's writing has appeared in The Harvard Review, Best New American Voices, and other publications.  She is the recipient of a PEN Translation Fund Grant and a Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study fellowship.  She is on the faculty at Ewha Womens University in Seoul, Korea.