April 11th
7pm
An instant bestseller in Korea and the follow up to the international bestseller, Please Look After Mom; centering on a woman’s efforts to reconnect with her aging father, uncovering long-held family secrets.
Two years after losing her daughter in a tragic accident, Hon finally returns to her home in the countryside to take care of her father. At first, her father only appears withdrawn and fragile, an aging man, awkward but kind around his own daughter. Then, after stumbling upon a chest of letters, Hon discovers the truth of her father’s past and reconstructs her own family history.
Consumed with her own grief, Hon had been blind to her father’s vulnerability and her family’s fragility. Unraveling secret after secret and thanks to conversations with loving family and friends, Hon grows closer to her father, who proves to be more complex than she ever gave him credit for. After living through one of the most tumultuous times in Korean history, her father’s life was once vibrant and ambitious, but spiraled during the postwar years. Now, after years of emotional isolation, Hon learns the whole truth, from her father’s affair and involvement in a religious sect, to the dynamic lives of her own siblings, to her family’s financial hardships.
What Hon uncovers about her father builds towards her understanding of the great scope of his sacrifice and heroism, and of his generation as a whole. More than just the portrait of a single man, I Went to See My Father opens a window onto humankind, family, loss, and war. With this long-awaited follow-up to Please Look After Mom—flawlessly rendered by award-winning translator Anton Hur—Kyung-Sook Shin has crafted an ambitious, global, epic, and lasting novel.
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Kyung-Sook Shin is one of South Korea’s most widely read and acclaimed novelists. She has been awarded the Manhae Grand Prize for Literature, the Dong-in Literary Award, the Man Asian Literary Prize, and many others. Shin is the author of eight short story collections, three essay collections, and eight novels, including the NYT-bestselling Please Look After Mom, which has been published in more than forty countries.
'Celina Lee is a globally recognized executive and career coach, lawyer, writer, and podcast host. On her podcast, Live Your Dream with Celina Lee, which has listeners from over 100 countries around the world, she shares lessons learned in her journey as well as interviews from inspirational leaders about what they have learned in life and career. Celina achieved her childhood dream of writing a book, and published a book in South Korea about stories of people who had the courage to pursue their dreams. She received her undergraduate degree from MIT and law degree from U.C. Berkeley School of Law.
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