A lively, unconventional way of thinking, a keen eye that peers into the depths.
Discover the essence of Kim Young-ha's prose: "See," "Read," and "Speak" all in one volume!

Kim Young-ha's prose trilogy, "See," "Speak," and "Read," which opened new horizons in prose with a style that combines humor, wit, intellectual thought, and original sensibility, is now published in a combined volume.
This trilogy, which went through 56 reprints and sold 200,000 copies, is considered the essence of Kim Young-ha's prose and has been much loved by readers.
The combined edition also includes a new chapter that was not found in the original edition.
In particular, the author's note at the beginning of the combined volume is a greeting to the readers and is also an interesting and complete piece of prose in itself.
The topics Kim Young-ha explores, lighthearted yet profound, span a wide range of fields, including literature, philosophy, society, and economics. Among them, "See," the first volume of the anthology, consists of twenty-seven essays that highlight the author's insight into the human spirit and the ins and outs of social structure.
By keenly capturing the daily lives of individuals living as hyper-connected terminals, whether they want to or not, under the dominance of multinational corporations and the background behind them, it awakens a new sense of "seeing" in us, who believe we see many things but in fact live passing them by without properly grasping their meaning, in an age where everything is rapidly disappearing.
A new article has been included to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of a friend who passed away during my college years.

Our inner self is not a Russian doll, with itself within itself and itself within itself.
Our inner selves are cluttered with the desires of others that we don't know when they intruded.
So it's always interesting.
This little hell called humanity.

--- p.102

Many people live with the belief that if they simply convey what they have seen and experienced with sincerity, it will be conveyed to the other person.
Homer knew two thousand eight hundred years ago how vain such a belief was.
Unfortunately, sincerity is not conveyed sincerely.
Sincerity is also most persuasively conveyed through a 'well-designed detour'.
That's probably why this world still needs stories and writers.

--- p.123

That every human being is living on behalf of someone who has already died.
That's why our shoulders are always so heavy.
That in this world there is a share for those who have died first.
Whenever I think of Hanyeol, I think of things like that.

--- p.150

Because I'm a writer, I write books.
I've probably published about twenty books so far.
But how many books have you read? I'm not a voracious reader, but I've probably read hundreds of them by now.
I am always overwhelmed by this asymmetry.

--- p.201

Why do we read? The world offers many answers.
I have several reasons too.
But above all, reading will be a struggle against the hubris that grows within us.
As I read Homer's Odyssey and Sophocles' Oedipus the King, I discovered the "arrogance of believing we know what we don't" and the "conceit of believing that we have advanced greatly since ancient times."
In this way, reading shakes the things we firmly believe in.

--- p.219

Reading a novel does not mean that some superior being, a human being, consumes a mass-produced product called a book.
The story of humanity is an act of connecting, for a very brief moment, to the vast world surrounding us and to the eternal time span through the small gap called a book.
Therefore, humans are stories, and stories are the universe.

--- p.248

Just as mountains don't disappear even if we don't go, some novels exist somewhere out there, whether we read them or not.
We approach novels knowing they are dangerous, we are powerfully influenced by them, we accept them as part of ourselves.
A reader may not gain any clear benefit from reading a novel.
You just change into someone who has read that novel.

--- p.313

Stories come from the sea of ​​stories.
Because books are made of square paper and have a clear beginning and end, we tend to imagine each book as an independent and complete entity.
But as Rushdie observed, while a book may stand alone, the stories it contains are fluid, like water or the sea.
It flows, merges, divides, and 'fills' the inside of a human being.
Therefore, to be a reader is to become a 'contractor' who can drink the warm water flowing from the sea of ​​stories.

--- p.357

We need to ask ourselves, not others.
What am I feeling now? What am I feeling? How am I feeling it? Am I feeling it correctly?

--- p.402