Bae Suah

Bae Suah is one of the iconic contemporary Korean writers, She claims that she wrote her first novel, “A Dark Room”, by accident. Although a chemist by profession, her writing experiments led to “Untold Night and Day” and an anthology of short stories that shaped her literary career. In addition, Bae Suah is interested in German-language prose, which can be seen in some of her texts, such as “Milena, Milena, Ecstatic”: strongly inspired by the life and style of Franz Kafka.

Like Kafka, Bae Suah is often described as an artist detached from her native culture. Her works are not typically Korean – that is, they do not resemble the vast amount of South Korean prose which is nowadays translated into English or even Polish. The author likes to experiment with sudden changes of pace and perspective, to lead readers along not-linear narrative paths. Thanks to this, in her relatively short books, she manages to create stories that stay with the readers for a long time.