Butterfly Sleep

$19.95

by Kim Kyung Ju, translated by Jake Levine

Kim Kyung Ju’s allegorical drama Butterfly Sleep refracts a critique of South Korea’s headlong development through a mixture of magic realism and absurdist dark humor set early in the Joseon dynasty. With lyricism and grace, Kim unfolds a lesson of consolation by confrontation, and finally reconciliation, with the ghosts of the nation.

by Kim Kyung Ju, translated by Jake Levine

Kim Kyung Ju’s allegorical drama Butterfly Sleep refracts a critique of South Korea’s headlong development through a mixture of magic realism and absurdist dark humor set early in the Joseon dynasty. With lyricism and grace, Kim unfolds a lesson of consolation by confrontation, and finally reconciliation, with the ghosts of the nation.

About the Author

Kim Kyung Ju is a Seoul-based poet, dramatist and performance artist. His poetry and essays are widely anthologized in South Korea and his plays have been produced abroad in several countries. He has written and translated over a dozen books of poetry, essays, and plays, and has been the recipient of many prizes and awards, including the Korean government’s Today’s Young Artist Prize and the Kim Su-yong Contemporary Poetry Award. His first book of poetry, I Am A Season That Does Not Exist In This World, is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed collections to debut in South Korea in the new millennium.

About the Translator

Jake Levine is an American translator, poet, and scholar. A PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at Seoul National University, he holds a BA and MFA from the University of Arizona. He teaches creative writing at Keimyung University and is a lecturer at the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. He is assistant editor at Acta Koreana and editor for the Korean poetry series Moon Country at Black Ocean.

Advanced Praise

“Kim leaves his readers with a sense that there are bigger, more permanent things than people.” — Publisher’s Weekly

“Kim Kyung Ju writes with a wholly singular, libidinal poetic.” — Jordan Tannahill

“Kim’s book stands as a two-fold project of resuscitation, at once linguistic and existential: to breathe poetry back into language, and meaning back into life.” — Loren Goodman, Korean Literature Now

“Jake Levine is a firesteed. Traditionally, a particularly marvelous horse was said, py poets, to have ‘bones of flame.’” — Charles Alexander, Editor and Poet

Published: November 2019
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9781946482228