I know I said this wouldn’t be all Shin all the time, but…
Shin Kyung-sook’s Please Look After Mom makes in onto the NYT bestseller list — first time ever for a Korean novel. Congrats to Shin and Kim Chi-young!
via @changbi_books via media daum (both Korean only)
“Please Look After Mom makes it on the NYT bestseller list! The first time ever for a Korean novel, and a big step as something that the whole publishing world pays attention to. Congratulations!”
…and there it is:
also selling!
Update: hm… just saw that there’s an “international version” too with a different cover and title. I must say, I like the international cover better, but it looks a lot less “O” friendly and suspiciously “foreign.”
Please Look After Mother (international version)
Please Look After Mom (U.S. version)
Okay, for the record, the Korean version with Dali’s Dawn, Noon, Sunset, and Twilight as the cover image:
Hahaha, Maureen Corrigan must be having fits of jealousy! Her mean and bigoted criticism on NPR probably backfired and helped the sale of Shin’s novel, instead.
Coincidentally, this morning I put up a post about those covers and how they, and their subtlely different titles, are clever marketing (read, stuffed with cliches) by Knopf.
http://www.ktlit.com/?p=3527
I also included a shot of the Korean cover so interested readers can see what a cliche that was, as well..
Hm…I couldn’t find the mention of the covers on LKL, but there is certainly plenty to be said about both versions. I’ve got to say, though, that I don’t really agree with your analysis of the images solely based on the reference to Sociological Images b/c it doesn’t really apply to the American version, at least. If anything, even though it doesn’t really appeal to my tastes, I think the American cover avoids a lot of those cliches by having a very modern image (although the weird hand gesture is, well, weird). I just don’t usually like book covers with photographic images as opposed to drawings/graphic representations.
The UK cover, even though I liked it better for it’s deco-ish aesthetic, has more of the basic “oriental” cliches: flower blossoms, check; “oriental” brush-stroke typeface and graphic detailing, check. Other than that, though, the image of the mother and child aren’t racially or culturally marked by obvious costumes or anything, and, truth be told, a lot of deco aesthetic was influenced by that period’s fascination with “oriental” art.
The Korean cover, which I added for reference, is the Salvador Dali painting Dawn, Noon, Sunset, and Twilight, which was a study of the female figure in Jean-François Millet’s The Angelus of Millet and apparently the object of some obsession on Dali’s part. Not sure what the cliches you saw there, but I’m curious.
When it comes down to it, I would say that the American cover, with its more modern representation and conspicuous lack of Asian markers besides the Asian woman in the image was deliberately chosen in part to appeal to the Korean-American/Asian-American audience — it suggests a more inclusive modern identity that happens to be Asian. The UK cover is clearly marking the novel as Oriental (hey, they still call SOAS SOAS), and telling the prospective reader “this is a book from a different place, but hey, they have a big modern city too!”
I have to admit, when I saw the UK cover of PLAM, the font and artwork reminded me of the Mary Poppins books I read as a kid. There’s obviously a more brushlike tilt to the PLAMother font, but the 뒷모습 and urban skyline are familiar. When I saw the UK cover, I thought maybe they wanted to make the book look more “classic.”
http://animatedviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/poppins-book.jpg
http://judyoz.com/media/ccp0/prodlg/mary-poppins-complete.jpg
Even better, PLAM will be on the Sunday, May 1st, NYT list, at #14. The Top 15 is the part of the list that gets more widely circulated, and posted in bookstores. It’s great to be on the list at all, but it’s a really big thing to crack the Top 15.