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Long for This World: A Novel Audiobook
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(3.25) - 8 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
In 1953, on a remote island in South Korea, a young boy stows away on the ferry that is carrying his older brother and sister-in-law to the mainland. Fifty-two years later, Han Hyun-kyu is on a plane back to Korea, leaving behind his wife and grown children in America. It is his daughter, Jane—a war photographer recently injured in a bombing in Baghdad and forced to return to New York—who journeys to find him in the South Korean town where his brothers have settled. Here, father and daughter take refuge from their demons, unearth passions, and, in the wake of tragedy, discover something deeper and more enduring than they'd imagined possible.
Long for This World is a pointillist triumph—depicting whole worlds through the details of a carefully prepared meal or a dark childhood memory. But author Sonya Chung is also working on a massive scale, effortlessly moving between domestic intimacies and the global stage—Iraq, Paris, Darfur, Syria—to illuminate the relationship between troubled world affairs and personal devastation. The result is a profound portrayal of the human experience, both large and small. Long for This World establishes Chung as a thrilling new voice in fiction.
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"A family of Koreans try to find their lives and connect with family in Korea and the United States. A tragedy brings them together even closer as they feel themselves drifting apart. A nice affecting story. "
— Lynn (4 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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An intricately structured and powerfully resonant portrait of lives lived at the crossroads of culture, and a family torn between the old world and the new.
— Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and author of A Short History of Women -
“Rich in cultural understanding and emotional insight. Sonya Chung is an extremely talented writer.”
— Mary Yukari Waters, O. Henry Prize–winning author of The Laws of Evening -
“An intricately structured and powerfully resonant portrait of lives lived at the crossroads of culture, and a family torn between the old world and the new.”
— Kate Walbert, National Book Award finalist and author of A Short History of Women -
“[Huber] deftly manages the large range of characters, settings, and time spans, ensuring that this epic story of several generations, taking place across many countries, is easily followed by the listener.”
— AudioFile -
“Switching deftly between different characters’ points of view, Chung portrays with precision and grace each character’s struggle to find his or her place in the family and in the world.”
— Publishers Weekly
Long for This World Listener Reviews
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" Want to read this book again... "
— Lisa, 4/19/2011 -
" "Some of us are not long for this world. The rest of us survive. For whatever reason, we are still standing...We are us, we are not them, we feel perhaps we should move about gingerly" (p.255). "
— Holly, 2/4/2011 -
" This novel - of a Korean/Korean-American family spread out across the globe - is told in vignettes, sort-of like a photographer's snapshots. The family is damaged and connected in a variety of ways. "
— Meghan, 5/23/2010
About Sonya Chung
Sonya Chung’s short fiction and essays have appeared in the Threepenny Review, BOMB Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, and Sonora Review, among others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a recipient of the Charles Johnson Fiction Award and the Bronx Council on the Arts Literary Residency and Fellowship. She teaches fiction writing at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, New York University, and Rutgers University, and she is a regular contributor to the literary blog The Millions.
About Hillary Huber
Hillary Huber, a Los Angeles–based voice talent with hundreds of commercials and promos under her belt, was bitten by the audiobook bug in 2005. She now records books on a regular basis and has been nominated for several Audie Awards and won numerous Earphones Awards.