Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book:    No One Writes Back (Original title: Amudop'yonji haji ant'a) Author: Jang Eun-Jin, translated by Jung Yewon ISBN: 978-1-56478-960-0 Publisher: Dalkey Archive Type of book: South Korea, travels, vagabond existence, communication, family issues, blind dog, friendships, relationships, letter writing, old fashioned phone calling, unresolved issues, 2009, quirky characters, fascinating hotels. Year it was published: 2009 (translated in 2013) Summary: Communication–or the lack thereof–is the subject of this sly update of the picaresque. 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 invent nicknames for them–he assigns them numbers. There’s 239, for example, who once dreamed of being a poet, but who now only reads her poems to a friend in a c...