Sign-In
Cart
Skull Water
Paperback
Publisher Price: $19.00
ISBN13: 9781954118485
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Published: Apr 30 2024
Pages: 390
Weight: 0.80
Height: 1.20 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.10
Language: English
A fascinating story of a young mixed-race man caught between two cultures, not knowing what to keep and what to leave behind.--James McBride, author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
A magnificent (Ha Jin), mesmerizing (James McBride), and magical (Marie Myung-Ok Lee) fever dream of a novel that interweaves the coming-of-age of a 1970s Korean-American boy grappling with his identity and the impact of intergenerational trauma.
Growing up outside a US military base in South Korea in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Insu--the son of a Korean mother and a German father enlisted in the US Army--spends his days with his half and half friends skipping school, selling scavenged Western goods on the black market, watching Hollywood movies, and testing the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. When he hears a legend that water collected in a human skull will cure any sickness, he vows to dig up a skull in order to heal his ailing Big Uncle, a geomancer who has been exiled by the family to a mountain cave to die.
Insu's quest takes him and his friends on a sprawling, wild journey into some of South Korea's darkest corners, opening them up to a fantastical world beyond their grasp. Meanwhile, Big Uncle has embraced his solitude and fate, trusting in otherworldly forces Insu cannot access. As he recalls his wartime experiences of betrayal and lost love, Big Uncle attempts to teach his nephew that life is not limited to what we can see--or think we know.
Largely autobiographical and sparkling with magical realism, Skull Water is the story of a boy coming into his own--and the ways the past haunts the present, in a country on the cusp of modernity, struggling to confront its troubled history. As Insu seeks the wisdom of his ancestors, what he learns, he hopes, will save not just his uncle but himself.
1 different editions
Also available
Also from
Fenkl, Heinz Insu
The Korean Myths: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes and Legends
Fenkl, Heinz Insu
Dalton-Fenkl, Bella Myong-Wol
Hardcover
Also in
General Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Anniversaries, Volume 2: From a Year in the Life of Gesine Cresspahl, April 1968-August 1968
Johnson, Uwe
Paperback
Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose, and Diary Excerpts
Plath, Sylvia
Paperback
Selected Writings: Robert Musil: Young Torless, Three Women, the Perfecting of a Love, and Other Writings
Musil, Robert
Agee, Joel
Paperback
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Baughman, Judith
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Paperback