Korean Literature discussion
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No One Writes Back
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2025/04 No One Writes Back by Jang Eun-jin
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My local in-person k-lit book club is going to read this in April 2025 for our first book and club meeting! Yay!
I am enjoying the book so far at ~30 in. I was a little be slow to warm up but now it is intriguing through the interplay with number 751.
I really enjoyed this book and I thank those that voted for it as our April group read. No spoilers now but I would be glad to discuss it when folks finish reading.r/Jack
I’m now 10% in and it is all very mysterious, looking forward to diving in deeper!
I enjoyed this book very much. Will wait for you guys to finish it and will be more than happy to chat with you about it ! (I read it in polish, in direct translation from Korean and I think that it was a really good job made by the translator)
Yun Ko-eun's The Disaster Tourist(2013. tr Lizzie Buehler, I loved Nobody Writes Back when I read it back in posted a long and affectionate review on GR. I was very grateful to Dalkey press including it in their ground-breaking Library of Korean Literature (underwritten by LTI Korea), but I always felt kind of bummed that such a wonderful book should be stuck with an ultra-drab old-style LKL cover. For those who feel the same, the cover of the Korean version should cheer you up.
John wrote: "Yun Ko-eun's The Disaster Tourist(2013. tr Lizzie Buehler, I loved Nobody Writes Back when I read it back in posted a long and affectionate review on GR. I was very grateful to Dalkey press inclu..."
Thank you for sharing! I want better covers for the Library of Korean Literature books so bad. As it stands, No One Writes Back is probably my favorite book I've read so far this year, and I have an interest in picking up several others (like Stingray!)
Kudos to the person that nominated this month's book club pick!
I won't go into too much detail as I feel like even my reaction to reading it would prove somewhat spoilery, but a couple of things:
I laughed a lot while reading this. I found all the characters to be mixture of strange and flawed and endearing (even his friend that checks his mail everyday.)
And I was really moved by the little glimpses we got into Jiyun's life. (view spoiler)
I hope everyone gets a chance to pick this up this month!
I was really not expecting how the last chapters closed out the book. I wish there were other works available from her in English translation. It was a really good story
I'm glad this was chosen as a book club read, I probably never would've read it otherwise but it was brilliant and really resonated with me. I want to quit my job and travel around motels. I love the Korean cover, Wajo's little party hat is adorable. :D
Communication—or the lack thereof—is the subject of this sly update of the picaresque novel. No One Writes Back is the story of a young man who leaves home with only his blind dog, an MP3 player, and a book, traveling aimlessly for three years, from motel to motel, meeting people on the road. Rather than learn the names of his fellow travelers—or even invent nicknames for them—he assigns them numbers. There's 239, who once dreamed of being a poet, but who now only reads her poems to a friend in a coma; there's 109, who rides trains endlessly because of a broken heart; and 32, who's already decided to commit suicide. The narrator writes letters to these men and women in the hope that he can console them in their various miseries, as well as keep a record of his own experiences: "A letter is like a journal entry for me, except that it gets sent to other people." No one writes back, of course, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some hope that one of them will, someday...