Lee Seung-u

This article is about a writer. For the footballer, see Lee Seung-woo.
Lee Seung-u
Born (1959-02-21) 21 February 1959
Jangheung, Jeollanam-do, South Korea
Occupation Novelist
Nationality South Korea
Korean name
Hangul 이승우
Hanja 李承雨
Revised Romanization I Seungu
McCune–Reischauer Ri Sŭngu
This is a Korean name; the family name is Lee.

Lee Seung-u (Hangul: 이승우, born 21 February 1959) is a South Korean writer.[1]

Life

Lee Seung-u was born in Jangheung, Jeollanam-do in 1959.[2] Lee Seung-u graduated from Seoul Theological University and studied at Yonsei University Graduate School of Theology.[3] One of the outstanding writers to have emerged in South Korea after the political repression of the 1980s,[4] he is today professor of Korean Literature at Chosun University.[2]

Lee's literary career started with his novel A Portrait of Erysichton, which was triggered by his shock at the assassination attempt of Pope Paul II in 1981. This work received the New Writers Award from Korean Literature Monthly.[5] In 1993 Lee's The Reverse Side of Life was awarded the 1st Daesan Literary Award[3] and he has also received he East West Literature Prize for I Will Live Long,[4] the Contemporary Literature Award for Fiction and the Hwang Sun-won Literary Award.[2]

Works

In Portrait of Erysichton, In the Shadow of Thorny Bushes, and The Reverse Side of Life, Lee Seung-u works on the notion of Christian redemption and how it intersects with human life, demonstrating how tension between heaven and earth are revealed in quotidian life.[6]Other works, including A Conjecture Regarding Labyrinth and To the Outside of the World face up to disillusionment pursuant to the corruption and devaluation of language.[3]

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, the 2008 Nobel Laureate for Literature, has a deep affection for Korean literature. During his year-long stay in Korea as a visiting professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, he held book readings with Korean authors on several occasions. At the press conference after the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony, he stated that “Korean literature is quite worthy of the Nobel Literature Prize,” and that “Personally, I would say that Lee Seung-u is one of the likely Korean candidates for the prize.”[7]

Among Lee’s works, only full-length novels have been translated into English and French, but he has published a great number of short story collections in the past three decades, due to the climate of the Korean literary world in which a writer’s capacity is evaluated mostly through short stories published in literary journals.[7]

Works in Translation

Works in Korean (partial)

Novels

Short story collections

Awards

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Lee Seung-U" LTI Korea Datasheet available at LTI Korea Library or online at: http://klti.or.kr/ke_04_03_011.do#
  2. 1 2 3 The Globalizing World and the Human Community, The Seoul International Forum of Literature 2011, p. 392
  3. 1 2 3 Korean Literature Translation Institute, Author Introductions.
  4. 1 2 Peter Owens Publishing
  5. ↑ Park Hae-hyun, "Lee Seung-u, a Korean Author Beloved in France"
  6. 1 2 Naver-Modern Korean Literature Dictionary, http://terms.naver.com/entry.nhn?docId=333769&cid=958&categoryId=1992#career
  7. 1 2 _list Books from Korea, http://www.list.or.kr/articles/article_view.htm?Div1=9&Idx=563
  8. ↑ Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/The-Reverse-Side-Life-Seung-U/dp/0720612594
  9. ↑ Amazon, http://www.amazon.com/Magnolia-Bi-lingual-Modern-Korean-Literature/dp/899400680X/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390809311&sr=1-8
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