Anton Hur talks literary translation on a special episode of Fully Booked.

On our first International Episode, released in conjunction with the March 1 International Issue of Kirkus Reviews, writer and translator Anton Hur discusses his forthcoming translation of Violets by Man Asian Literary Prize–winning novelist Kyung-sook Shin (Feminist Press, April 12).

A compact and impactful novel by one of South Korea’s most famous and acclaimed authors, Violets tells of a young woman named San who takes a job in a flower shop in Seoul in the 1990s, after a series of painful rejections. In preternaturally evocative prose, it explores friendship, forbidden desire, isolation, loneliness, and oppression.

Hur, who’s based in Seoul, South Korea, has translated Shin’s The Court Dancer, Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, The Prisoner by Hwang Sok-yong, and Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung. He is the translator of a forthcoming Korean edition of Night Sky With Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong.

Hur and host Megan Labrise talk about the awesome authorial prowess of Kyung-sook Shin, and why he chose Violets as the next of her books to translate; whether the Korean literature translation community is an intimate one; what Hur is known for as a translator; being a good reader as essential to being a good translator; the aural coziness of violets to violence, and whether there’s an analog in Korean; what glossing means; the American allergy to footnotes; translators’ names on the covers of books; and much more.

Then young readers’ editor Laura Simeon, fiction editor Laurie Muchnick, and editor-in-chief Tom Beer offer their international reading recommendations for early 2022.

Editors’ picks:

Star Fishing by San-koon Kim, trans. by Ginger Lee (Abrams)

The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil, trans. by Takami Nieda (Soho Teen)

The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. by Jennifer Croft (Riverhead)

The Artisans: A Vanishing Chinese Village by Shen Fuyu, trans. by Jeremy Tiang (Astra House)

Thin Places: A Natural History of Healing and Home by Kerri ní Dochartaigh (Milkweed)

Also mentioned on this episode:

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (Grand Central Publishing)

“The Order of Things: Jennifer Croft on Translating Olga Tokarczuk”

The Magician of Lublin by Isaac Bashevis Singer (Noonday)

Bronze and Sunflower by Cao Wenxuan, trans. by Helen Wang, illus. by Meilo So (Candlewick)

And thanks to our advertisers:

Wager Tough by Tom Farrell

Fully Booked is produced by Cabel Adkins Audio and Megan Labrise.