On the Eve of the Uprising : And Other Stories from Colonial Korea

From a patriot's indignant cry to a dandy's playful soliloquy to an exrevolutionary's forlorn musing, the collection's diverse literary voices give a powerful representation to the richness, complexity, and vigor of Korean intellectual and cultural life under Japanese imperialism. Collected here are the first-time English translations of six classic stories from colonial Korea (1919-1945) as well as the time of liberation (1945-1948). Each piece takes a different perspective on a defining process in Korean history---the colonization and modernizatic under Japanese rule---and chorally, the volume demonstrates the rich variety of registers, settings, styles, and thematic concerns that characterized the literary production of early modern Korean

The editor's introduction places the collection in the context of modern Korean literary history, and short biographies precede each story. In its judicious selection of classic texts, On the Eve of the Uprising and Other Stories from Colonial Korea offers an unprecedented opportunity to explore the intellectual complexity and artistic richness of colonial Korean literatures.