Sonya Chung's astonishing first novel tells the story of a family divided between contemporary America and a small Korean town.Long for This World is about loss and renewal and what it means to go home.
In 1953, on a remote island in South Korea, a young boy stows away on the ferry that is carrying his older brother and sister-in-law to the mainland. Fifty-two years later, Han Hyun-kyu is on a plane back to Korea, leaving behind his wife and grown children in America. It is his daughter, Jane -- a war photographer recently injured in a bombing in Baghdad and forced to return to New York -- who journeys to find him in the South Korean town where his brothers have settled. Here, father and daughter take refuge from their demons, unearth passions, and, in the wake of tragedy, each discover something deeper and more enduring than they'd imagined possible.
Long for This World is a pointillist triumph -- depicting whole worlds through the details of a carefully prepared meal or a dark childhood memory. But Chung is also working on a massive scale, effortlessly moving between domestic intimacies and the global stage -- Iraq, Paris, Darfur, Syria -- to illuminate the relationship between troubled world affairs and personal devastation. The result is a profound portrayal of the human experience -- both large and small. Long for This World establishes Sonya Chung as a thrilling new voice in fiction.
“An intricately structured and powerfully resonant portrait of lives lived at the crossroads of culture, and a family torn between the old world and the new, Long for This Worldmarks a powerful debut from a young writer of great talent and promise.”
-Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist for Our Kind and author ofA Short History of Women
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“A wonderful and eminently readable novel, rich in cultural understanding and emotional insight. Sonya Chung is an extremely talented writer.”
–Mary Yukari Waters, O’Henry and Pushcart Prize Award-winning author of The Laws of Evening and The Favorites
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“…elegant debut novel.. Switching deftly between different characters’ points of view, Chung portrays with precision and grace each character’s struggle to find his or her place in the family and in the world.”
-Publisher’s Weekly
Sonya, I'm already anticipating to your novel with real pleasure! Who could NOT be excited about a "pointillistic triumph"? I'll also be sure to recommend it to Lucia Orth, the author of Baby Jesus Pawn Shop, as I know she's been reading novels set in Korea and reviewed several on A Wing and a Page recently .