Shy

Recommendation
Translator's Note

George Saunders, Samantha Harvey, and Han Kang…
Why Booker-winning authors read Max Porter's books

There is no one who has played as big a role in introducing author Han Kang to the world as Deborah Smith, the translator who translated her works into English, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Max Porter, who was an editor at the British publisher Granta at the time.
He was the one who pushed for the publication of The Vegetarian after reading the sample translation provided by Deborah Smith.
From translation to editing and cover design, his intentions were incorporated into every process of publication, and 『The Vegetarian』 was named the winner of the International Booker Prize, laying the foundation for author Han Kang to be recognized internationally beyond Korea.
Nine years later, in 2025, Potter becomes the head of the Booker jury.
The editor who once introduced great works to the world has now risen to the center and most authoritative position in world literature.

Meanwhile, Porter has steadily built up credibility as a novelist.
All of his books have become bestsellers, and one was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
What kind of novel will he write, given his exceptional insight into literature?
George Saunders, winner of the 2017 Booker Prize, unhesitatingly named Max Potter as his favorite author in the world, explaining that he chose him because “he makes the world seem stranger and more lovable, with his fresh plots and inimitable voice.”
Samantha Harvey, winner of the 2024 Booker Prize for Orbit, described the explosive energy of Potter's novels:
“I have never experienced characters springing from the pages with such power and beauty in any book.” In this way, Porter makes even the most renowned literary figures eagerly anticipate his next work, and each new release delivers a fresh shock to both critics and readers like a bomb.

Max Porter, who has published four novels to date, is recognized as a writer who displays a unique formal beauty that blurs the boundaries between poetry and prose.
In Korea, author Han Kang, who rarely writes recommendations, readily praised her first novel, “Sadness is Winged,” calling it “a book with a strange warmth and beauty,” and her second novel, “Lanny,” recommended by Kim Yeon-su, a leading writer in the Korean literary world, have been published.
For the new novel 『Shy』, which is being introduced after three years, author Kim Yeon-su, who had a special conversation with Potter at the 2021 Seoul International Writers' Festival, wrote a recommendation, expressing the special connection between them.


“Do you ever get tired of living as yourself?”
A one-night journey to save the life of a boy struggling to make ends meet.

Failed the middle school entrance exam.
Expulsion from two schools.
My first warning was at the age of thirteen.
First arrest at age fifteen.
Shai, a sixteen-year-old boy who has been labeled a problem child, lives at the alternative school 'Last Chance'.
This school, which means 'last chance,' is a small boarding school built by renovating a centuries-old country mansion, where Shai and other delinquent youth live under the care of teachers with boundless patience and affection.
But despite the help from those around her, Shai's heart still seethes with alternating feelings of violence, guilt, anxiety, and shame.
He wants to break free from the emotional shackles he has created, but he suffers because he cannot break free.


“If life is this stressful, this difficult, then it’s too much, it’s really fucking too much, the whole world is annoying and bothersome,” _from the text

At 3:13 a.m., Shai, having made a decision, runs away from home, far from lights, taxi stops, trust, and her mother.
The novel follows Shai's three-hour journey from school to the pond, carrying a heavy backpack.
The backpack is full of flint.
He plans to drown himself in a nearby pond.
As he walks, memories, dreams, visions and ghostly voices constantly clash in his head.


"Shy" is a work that perfectly portrays the state of mind of a boy who wants to run away somewhere but cannot, and is as fragile as if it could break at any moment, yet as strong and intense as a "600 million year old flint."
In her recommendation, author Kim Yeon-su described the book as “a novel that draws the rapid changes in others’ lives and the pain and sadness that arise in the process into oneself, and thus approaches in a confusing way.”
And he added that the confusion comes from love.
The story of Shai, who descends to the pond with a backpack full of terribly heavy rocks and eventually returns home, is filled with the voices of others, but precisely because of that, it takes us to an unfamiliar place.
There we hear the stones speak, and as dawn breaks we feel our backs growing lighter.
Additionally, author Kim Yeon-su recalled a conversation with Max Porter during the pandemic and quoted Porter's words.
“I don’t want to be turned to stone.” For Potter, stone represents death, while flesh and blood represent love.
Choosing love is not about ignoring death, but rather about facing it and declaring that we will remain alive.
So Shai's midnight journey is also the epic embodiment of that declaration.

“It broke my heart” _Cillian Murphy
[Such Little Things] The Second Novel Chosen by the Production Team

The novel was made into a film called "Steve," produced and starring Academy Award-winning actor Cillian Murphy, which opened up a wider field of appreciation for readers.
The film premiered at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival and was later released worldwide on Netflix.
Murphy was so captivated by the work's powerful emotional resonance that he confessed that after reading "Shy," his heart was "shattered." This literary shock was the biggest factor that led him to become a producer and actor.

Directors Cillian Murphy and Tim Milanz, who adapted Claire Keegan's masterpiece, "Such Small Things," into a film of the same name, have proven their ability to recognize good work and beautifully bring it to life on screen.
"Shy" is the second work they have decided to make into a film.
It means that this is a story that we decided needed to be made known to the world urgently.
Director Tim Milanz, who directed the film, recalled reading Porter's work while working on Keegan's film, saying, "The two works couldn't be more different.
“If Claire Keegan is a writer who piles tiny lines on top of vast silences, Max Porter writes like he’s building a cathedral of words on top of an iceberg,” he described.
While Keegan and Porter's works share a high level of literary achievement, they also reach readers in completely different ways.

“Porter does more with less than any other writer.” _Rumpus Magazine
A small masterpiece that throws a 600 million year old flint stone at the source of the wound.

A master of small masterpieces that do more with less.
As the media has labeled it, most of Porter's novels don't exceed 200 pages.
『Shy』 is by far the shortest of his works, at 136 pages (168 pages in the Korean edition).
But the emotional spectrum contained within it is broader and deeper than any epic, as Potter boasted that of all his books, it was "the one I wrote the fastest, but the one I revised the longest."
However, the author says that he wrote this novel in the hope that it would be read in one sitting and that it would sound like a nocturne.


The sentences in 『Shy』 are rhythmic like music.
Short phrases break like beats, and sometimes a single breath creates a long sentence that stretches across the page.
This rhythm overlaps with the drum and bass music Shai listens to, making him physically experience his consciousness and emotional state.
This unique format shatters the grammar of what a novel should be, giving readers a deeper resonance.
As translator Min Seung-nam said, readers thus have a “synesthetic reading experience of listening to the novel while reading it.”


“Getting to know yourself takes many seasons.
“It’s still spring for you”
A book I really want to give to myself as I go through a long, dark tunnel.
The Catcher in the Rye: A New Generation Embracing Anxiety

It's not just Shai's problem that life is difficult.
Living itself is stressful.
There is no guarantee that tomorrow will be better than today, and the road ahead still holds unfamiliar pain and failure.
Yet we still have to go.
Towards people I haven't met yet, with the people I've hurt, and with myself who has been hurt.
“Get up and go, Shai.” This is why this sentence appears repeatedly in the novel.
The stones whisper that love begins not when the pain disappears, but when we walk with the pain, and that it is this love that allows us to live again.
The hands that hit others, the hands that smoked marijuana, the hands that threw rocks—all those hands must eventually reach out and put their arms around each other's shoulders, that the world isn't completely hopeless, that there's still reason to love.

“If you don’t give up and collapse in the dark tunnel, but instead find strength to walk through it, you may be able to reach the end of the tunnel and encounter a bright light.
The words of Mr. Steve from Last Chance also give hope to Shai.
'You are not defined by who you are now, by who you were in 1995.
Later on, the child won't even remember much.
Shai from 2005 will look back on this time and agree with me.
Then he will say this.
Shy, I'm just around the corner.
Just get through this period.
And then, she'll say, 'Steve was right!' We don't know when Shai will be haunted by Eve's ghost again and attempt to take her own life, but somehow we're left with the optimism that the Shai of 2005 will look back on that dark tunnel and admit that Steve was right.
“He has a last chance!” - From the translator’s note by Seungnam Min

The novel refuses to diagnose or frame Shai.
Nor is it easy to be optimistic that a bright future awaits him.
It just shows an attempt to understand.
Just as "The Catcher in the Rye" broke away from the traditional coming-of-age narrative and created a syndrome by infusing pathos that only true youth can empathize with, "Shy" also has the same raw shock and deep empathy.
This is the true face of Max Porter, who sings of 'the beauty of ugliness' and 'passionate despair'.
That's why Mr. Steve's words pierce our hearts.
Someday each of us will be able to say to ourselves:
Those days are over, and it will all be okay in the end.