Landscape with snakes and cabbages
 |
Description
Book Introduction
The subtle shadow cast between people
An agile and flexible rhythm like a wild animal roaming through it
The 2025 Young Writer's Award winning work, "Bauer's Garden"
Includes the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award Excellence Award winner, "Landscape with a Snake and Cabbage"
The first short story collection of author Kang Bo-ra, who became the center of attention by winning the 2025 Young Writer's Award for her short story "Bauer's Garden," which contains the "long aftertaste" created by "the difficulty and beauty of living" (2025 Young Writer's Award judges' comments), has been published, titled "Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages."
This is the author's first book published in four years since his debut in the Hankook Ilbo New Year's Literary Contest in 2021 with the short story "From Tinian," but the seven pieces included demonstrate that the author's skills far surpass those of a rookie.
The novel's stable structure and development that inherently embodies the writer's firm center of gravity, the deep flavor that infuses a long-standing love for art and culture, the sharp and sophisticated humor that tickles the reader's head and heart, and above all, the author's writing skills and insight into the interests of the general reader, cultivated over approximately 15 years as a reporter for weekly and monthly magazines, make Kang Bo-ra's first collection of short stories an impeccable debut.
Like previous journalist-turned-novelists, Kang Bo-ra is also interested in the society formed by diverse people coming together.
However, Kang Bo-ra's novels depict the microscopic relationships between people in a much more fluid and detailed tone.
His work begins with the question that each person's current standing position can never be the same.
From personal tastes to the era in which we live and the range of capital we can enjoy, the elements that make up human identity are so diverse that, in our eyes, others are literally "people different from us" and "strangers who are different from us."
Kang Bo-ra's characters are tensely watching their surroundings to avoid being hurt in the dense jungle of these unfamiliar beings, and they nimbly move between predator and prey in the food chain, identifying themselves according to the situation.
The title of the collection of short stories, ‘Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages,’ hints at the tension that this ‘strangeness’ causes.
Snakes and cabbage were subjects that aroused curiosity in some people and discomfort in others, according to a survey study led by sociologist Bourdieu in France in the 1960s.
Kang Bo-ra captures the vibrant emotions of the wild animals within humans who live as subjects in the gaze of others, looking into both the mind that believes it can read something from those who are presented as empty signs and the mind that is bewildered by not being able to read anything.
An agile and flexible rhythm like a wild animal roaming through it
The 2025 Young Writer's Award winning work, "Bauer's Garden"
Includes the Lee Hyo-seok Literary Award Excellence Award winner, "Landscape with a Snake and Cabbage"
The first short story collection of author Kang Bo-ra, who became the center of attention by winning the 2025 Young Writer's Award for her short story "Bauer's Garden," which contains the "long aftertaste" created by "the difficulty and beauty of living" (2025 Young Writer's Award judges' comments), has been published, titled "Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages."
This is the author's first book published in four years since his debut in the Hankook Ilbo New Year's Literary Contest in 2021 with the short story "From Tinian," but the seven pieces included demonstrate that the author's skills far surpass those of a rookie.
The novel's stable structure and development that inherently embodies the writer's firm center of gravity, the deep flavor that infuses a long-standing love for art and culture, the sharp and sophisticated humor that tickles the reader's head and heart, and above all, the author's writing skills and insight into the interests of the general reader, cultivated over approximately 15 years as a reporter for weekly and monthly magazines, make Kang Bo-ra's first collection of short stories an impeccable debut.
Like previous journalist-turned-novelists, Kang Bo-ra is also interested in the society formed by diverse people coming together.
However, Kang Bo-ra's novels depict the microscopic relationships between people in a much more fluid and detailed tone.
His work begins with the question that each person's current standing position can never be the same.
From personal tastes to the era in which we live and the range of capital we can enjoy, the elements that make up human identity are so diverse that, in our eyes, others are literally "people different from us" and "strangers who are different from us."
Kang Bo-ra's characters are tensely watching their surroundings to avoid being hurt in the dense jungle of these unfamiliar beings, and they nimbly move between predator and prey in the food chain, identifying themselves according to the situation.
The title of the collection of short stories, ‘Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages,’ hints at the tension that this ‘strangeness’ causes.
Snakes and cabbage were subjects that aroused curiosity in some people and discomfort in others, according to a survey study led by sociologist Bourdieu in France in the 1960s.
Kang Bo-ra captures the vibrant emotions of the wild animals within humans who live as subjects in the gaze of others, looking into both the mind that believes it can read something from those who are presented as empty signs and the mind that is bewildered by not being able to read anything.
- You can preview some of the book's contents.
Preview
index
Tinian _007
Landscape with Snake and Cabbage _037
Sincerely Yours _083
Bauer's Garden _135
Touching the Freezing Point _171
Praise of the Rectangle _221
Beautiful and Unbeautiful _253
Commentary | Inayoung (literary critic)
Three Ways to Love Destiny _303
Author's Note
Raising the Tail Feathers _323
Recommendation_326
Landscape with Snake and Cabbage _037
Sincerely Yours _083
Bauer's Garden _135
Touching the Freezing Point _171
Praise of the Rectangle _221
Beautiful and Unbeautiful _253
Commentary | Inayoung (literary critic)
Three Ways to Love Destiny _303
Author's Note
Raising the Tail Feathers _323
Recommendation_326
Into the book
Now, when others laugh, I laugh along with them, and when others get serious, I frown along with them.
Like a herbivore thrown into the wild, I'm on edge, watching the moods of predators.
I know that my attitude is unnecessarily defensive.
And that the benefits are overly optimistic.
---From "In Tinian, pp. 27-28"
Ho-kyung was stirring the room to the sound of percussion instruments like a shaman performing a ritual.
His face was filled with awe, like someone who had just discovered his own superpowers.
My eyes were dizzy.
The sound of percussion instruments pounded my heart.
Ho-kyung, who had discovered me, approached me with a sweaty face.
He would spin his head, show his teeth without hesitation, shake his butt like a child, bark at the person next to him without hesitation, and roll around on his own before collapsing on top of me.
I started laughing under the hood.
I started laughing with all my might, my chest heaving.
The percussion performance reached its climax.
---From "Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages, pp. 75-76"
There it is! The chestnuts are over there! When Haru shouted, I was already running at full speed toward the meadow.
A dark brown horse was seen leisurely swaying its hindquarters across the fog.
At the sound of my footsteps, Albam increased its speed and was sucked back into the fog.
I followed the sound of clattering hooves, turning from right to left and then right again.
As I wandered through the treeless meadow, my sense of direction quickly disappeared.
---From "Sincerely Yours, pp. 128-129"
“I feel upset when I hear that.
"Why do you think you've already failed? Where else can you find someone as skilled as you?"
Jeongrim answered, leaning her head against the window.
“I am glad to hear that.
But I'm sure I failed the audition.
I could tell by the judges' reactions.
“Well, who would sympathize with a mother who goes through something like that and is relieved that it turned out well?”
As the car turned a sharp curve at the roundabout, the two women's bodies slowly tilted in one direction.
“Hearing that, I feel comforted.
“I felt similar when I had a miscarriage.”
Jeongrim turned her head and looked straight at Eunhwa.
A heavy silence fell inside the car.
---From "Bauer's Garden, pp. 163-164"
The fact that the person you love doesn't read books that are worth reading.
The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with is not drawn to books like "The Axe that Breaks the Frozen Sea Within Us," but only to books like sweetened tteokbokki.
For me, who has lived my entire life considering language as the basis of thought, that was a fatal flaw.
I really don't understand, I'm disappointed, I'm annoyed, I'm cute, I'm sexy, I'm lovable... I'm so sensitive to the difference in texture between the 2019 and 2020 Chardonnays, but I'm surprisingly insensitive to the difference between good and bad books.
---From "Touching the Freezing Point, pp. 176-177"
It started with a plum tree bonsai placed on the inside windowsill.
A few days later, I noticed a crude wooden carving in the shape of a bird—a duck, to be exact—in the same spot, and I realized the bonsai had been moved to the table in the middle of the living room.
Next, the duck sculpture disappeared and a new, previously non-existent porcelain vase appeared.
The round velvet cushion on the sofa has now been replaced with a square one.
It was as if the owner knew I was spying and was deliberately playing a prank on me.
It was a ridiculous guess, but at the time, it really felt like a kind of spot-the-difference game designed just for me.
---From "In Praise of the Rectangle, p. 226"
While I was going back and forth between home and my studio, trying to figure out the cause of the unknown error, I lost nearly five kilograms.
I wiped my pale face with my palm.
Something important had disappeared before my eyes and was still disappearing.
I thought it couldn't end like this.
If it is their right to disappear without a trace, then it is my right to hold onto that transience so that it cannot escape.
Like a herbivore thrown into the wild, I'm on edge, watching the moods of predators.
I know that my attitude is unnecessarily defensive.
And that the benefits are overly optimistic.
---From "In Tinian, pp. 27-28"
Ho-kyung was stirring the room to the sound of percussion instruments like a shaman performing a ritual.
His face was filled with awe, like someone who had just discovered his own superpowers.
My eyes were dizzy.
The sound of percussion instruments pounded my heart.
Ho-kyung, who had discovered me, approached me with a sweaty face.
He would spin his head, show his teeth without hesitation, shake his butt like a child, bark at the person next to him without hesitation, and roll around on his own before collapsing on top of me.
I started laughing under the hood.
I started laughing with all my might, my chest heaving.
The percussion performance reached its climax.
---From "Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages, pp. 75-76"
There it is! The chestnuts are over there! When Haru shouted, I was already running at full speed toward the meadow.
A dark brown horse was seen leisurely swaying its hindquarters across the fog.
At the sound of my footsteps, Albam increased its speed and was sucked back into the fog.
I followed the sound of clattering hooves, turning from right to left and then right again.
As I wandered through the treeless meadow, my sense of direction quickly disappeared.
---From "Sincerely Yours, pp. 128-129"
“I feel upset when I hear that.
"Why do you think you've already failed? Where else can you find someone as skilled as you?"
Jeongrim answered, leaning her head against the window.
“I am glad to hear that.
But I'm sure I failed the audition.
I could tell by the judges' reactions.
“Well, who would sympathize with a mother who goes through something like that and is relieved that it turned out well?”
As the car turned a sharp curve at the roundabout, the two women's bodies slowly tilted in one direction.
“Hearing that, I feel comforted.
“I felt similar when I had a miscarriage.”
Jeongrim turned her head and looked straight at Eunhwa.
A heavy silence fell inside the car.
---From "Bauer's Garden, pp. 163-164"
The fact that the person you love doesn't read books that are worth reading.
The woman I want to spend the rest of my life with is not drawn to books like "The Axe that Breaks the Frozen Sea Within Us," but only to books like sweetened tteokbokki.
For me, who has lived my entire life considering language as the basis of thought, that was a fatal flaw.
I really don't understand, I'm disappointed, I'm annoyed, I'm cute, I'm sexy, I'm lovable... I'm so sensitive to the difference in texture between the 2019 and 2020 Chardonnays, but I'm surprisingly insensitive to the difference between good and bad books.
---From "Touching the Freezing Point, pp. 176-177"
It started with a plum tree bonsai placed on the inside windowsill.
A few days later, I noticed a crude wooden carving in the shape of a bird—a duck, to be exact—in the same spot, and I realized the bonsai had been moved to the table in the middle of the living room.
Next, the duck sculpture disappeared and a new, previously non-existent porcelain vase appeared.
The round velvet cushion on the sofa has now been replaced with a square one.
It was as if the owner knew I was spying and was deliberately playing a prank on me.
It was a ridiculous guess, but at the time, it really felt like a kind of spot-the-difference game designed just for me.
---From "In Praise of the Rectangle, p. 226"
While I was going back and forth between home and my studio, trying to figure out the cause of the unknown error, I lost nearly five kilograms.
I wiped my pale face with my palm.
Something important had disappeared before my eyes and was still disappearing.
I thought it couldn't end like this.
If it is their right to disappear without a trace, then it is my right to hold onto that transience so that it cannot escape.
---From "The Beautiful and the Unbeautiful, p. 293"
Publisher's Review
Tastes, generations, classes… …
The invisible boundary that divides each of us
We are a little bit strange in each other's eyes
But it's so beautiful
In her debut work, “In Tinian,” the author also pointed out the heavy identities that we must live with as fixed absolute values, such as gender, race, and nationality.
The protagonist, 'Minji', feels threatened as an Asian woman when approached by unknown white men while traveling to Tinian Island with her friend 'Suhye', and exists as a judgemental being in front of fellow Korean men as well.
On an island still bearing the scars of the power struggles between the great powers, Minji reflects on herself, who felt rejection and wariness towards Suhye, who freely enjoys traveling without caring about what others think.
The works arranged in the first half of the collection gradually visualize the invisible boundaries that make us feel alienated from one another, down to the smallest details.
"Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages" and "Sincerely Yours" are masterpieces that bring to light the gap in social, cultural, and economic capital and capture the subtle moments of conflict where the status of each is reversed.
In "Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages," Jae-ah, an art worker, feels a subtle inferiority complex toward her husband, a middle-class, "pure-blooded" cultural figure, and has been copying his aesthetics. However, while traveling in Bali, she meets backpackers whom she would normally despise, and discovers an unexpected side of them, and feels drawn to them.
Will Balinese tourists remain silent objects of contempt?
Which world does Jae-ah truly love?
Dan, a features editor at the magazine "Sincerely Yours," admires his "senior downtown" peers who have built distinguished careers and settled into comfortable lives, but he also feels a sense of deprivation toward the previous generation who seemed to have found success so easily.
As Moon-tae, a friend who did not understand the lifestyle of her senior in the city, travels between Seoul and Jeju Island with her senior in the city, and through a good deed (taking care of an acquaintance's 'companion horse') that comes from the stability and leisure of the older generation, they begin to build a bond that cannot be contained, and the relationship between the three of them flows in a different direction than before.
After this 'tropical trilogy' set in a hot and humid, unusual space, Kang Bo-ra seems determined not to create a familiar pattern when it comes to novel writing, and gradually changes her world of works.
“Touching the Freezing Point” and “In Praise of the Rectangle” are works that seem to juggling the vulgar but concrete value of money with other grandiose but abstract values.
In "Touching the Freezing Point," Dong-pyo, who has achieved his pure dream of living a "life of literature" and is culturally rich but economically empty, reunites with Hae-gyu, a senior from college who, despite being a purer literature student than himself, seems to have become tainted by the world beyond recognition. They explore the balance in life that each of them tries to find within the realistic conditions of a capitalist society.
In "Ode to the Rectangle," 'I', who dreams of a wealthy life with her husband who works at a large corporation and wants to move from an old villa to a large apartment complex, admires the neat scenery as she peeks into the rectangular window of a woman who lives in a similarly shabby villa across the street.
The landlady dislikes me, a new bride who is still pursuing beauty without being worn out by life.
The complex emotions of hate and affection exchanged between these three women are conveyed as they are in the novel.
In “The Beautiful and the Ugly” and “Bauer’s Garden,” we can see that Kang Bo-ra began to express her affection for human existence more honestly.
"The Beautiful and the Ugly" depicts the brief time when two artists, Min-hong and Lee-jae, and an aspiring novelist, Joo-young, encourage and push each other just before they embark on their own lonely paths to become great artists. "Bauer's Garden" depicts the encounter between two actors, Eun-hwa and Jeong-rim, who have suffered the pain of a miscarriage and must now use that pain as a stepping stone to land a role in a play.
In these novels, the differences between the characters are not grounds for wariness or discomfort, but rather unique characteristics worthy of deep understanding and respect.
Min-hong and Lee Jae's artistic worlds are each beautiful in their own right, and the world of art that Joo-young will build can only be determined by him, and the individual pains of Eun-hwa and Jeong-rim can never be simplified or easily equated with a few words from the director.
By embracing the differences we each possess as beautiful and unique fingerprint patterns, Kang Bo-ra's novels have achieved a profound resonance that moves readers' hearts.
This accomplished new writer, who has just published her first novel collection, will present us with some wonderful works in the future.
This collection of short stories, filled with Kang Bo-ra's fingerprints, has the power to make us look forward to his future.
The invisible boundary that divides each of us
We are a little bit strange in each other's eyes
But it's so beautiful
In her debut work, “In Tinian,” the author also pointed out the heavy identities that we must live with as fixed absolute values, such as gender, race, and nationality.
The protagonist, 'Minji', feels threatened as an Asian woman when approached by unknown white men while traveling to Tinian Island with her friend 'Suhye', and exists as a judgemental being in front of fellow Korean men as well.
On an island still bearing the scars of the power struggles between the great powers, Minji reflects on herself, who felt rejection and wariness towards Suhye, who freely enjoys traveling without caring about what others think.
The works arranged in the first half of the collection gradually visualize the invisible boundaries that make us feel alienated from one another, down to the smallest details.
"Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages" and "Sincerely Yours" are masterpieces that bring to light the gap in social, cultural, and economic capital and capture the subtle moments of conflict where the status of each is reversed.
In "Landscape with Snakes and Cabbages," Jae-ah, an art worker, feels a subtle inferiority complex toward her husband, a middle-class, "pure-blooded" cultural figure, and has been copying his aesthetics. However, while traveling in Bali, she meets backpackers whom she would normally despise, and discovers an unexpected side of them, and feels drawn to them.
Will Balinese tourists remain silent objects of contempt?
Which world does Jae-ah truly love?
Dan, a features editor at the magazine "Sincerely Yours," admires his "senior downtown" peers who have built distinguished careers and settled into comfortable lives, but he also feels a sense of deprivation toward the previous generation who seemed to have found success so easily.
As Moon-tae, a friend who did not understand the lifestyle of her senior in the city, travels between Seoul and Jeju Island with her senior in the city, and through a good deed (taking care of an acquaintance's 'companion horse') that comes from the stability and leisure of the older generation, they begin to build a bond that cannot be contained, and the relationship between the three of them flows in a different direction than before.
After this 'tropical trilogy' set in a hot and humid, unusual space, Kang Bo-ra seems determined not to create a familiar pattern when it comes to novel writing, and gradually changes her world of works.
“Touching the Freezing Point” and “In Praise of the Rectangle” are works that seem to juggling the vulgar but concrete value of money with other grandiose but abstract values.
In "Touching the Freezing Point," Dong-pyo, who has achieved his pure dream of living a "life of literature" and is culturally rich but economically empty, reunites with Hae-gyu, a senior from college who, despite being a purer literature student than himself, seems to have become tainted by the world beyond recognition. They explore the balance in life that each of them tries to find within the realistic conditions of a capitalist society.
In "Ode to the Rectangle," 'I', who dreams of a wealthy life with her husband who works at a large corporation and wants to move from an old villa to a large apartment complex, admires the neat scenery as she peeks into the rectangular window of a woman who lives in a similarly shabby villa across the street.
The landlady dislikes me, a new bride who is still pursuing beauty without being worn out by life.
The complex emotions of hate and affection exchanged between these three women are conveyed as they are in the novel.
In “The Beautiful and the Ugly” and “Bauer’s Garden,” we can see that Kang Bo-ra began to express her affection for human existence more honestly.
"The Beautiful and the Ugly" depicts the brief time when two artists, Min-hong and Lee-jae, and an aspiring novelist, Joo-young, encourage and push each other just before they embark on their own lonely paths to become great artists. "Bauer's Garden" depicts the encounter between two actors, Eun-hwa and Jeong-rim, who have suffered the pain of a miscarriage and must now use that pain as a stepping stone to land a role in a play.
In these novels, the differences between the characters are not grounds for wariness or discomfort, but rather unique characteristics worthy of deep understanding and respect.
Min-hong and Lee Jae's artistic worlds are each beautiful in their own right, and the world of art that Joo-young will build can only be determined by him, and the individual pains of Eun-hwa and Jeong-rim can never be simplified or easily equated with a few words from the director.
By embracing the differences we each possess as beautiful and unique fingerprint patterns, Kang Bo-ra's novels have achieved a profound resonance that moves readers' hearts.
This accomplished new writer, who has just published her first novel collection, will present us with some wonderful works in the future.
This collection of short stories, filled with Kang Bo-ra's fingerprints, has the power to make us look forward to his future.
GOODS SPECIFICS
- Date of issue: May 29, 2025
- Page count, weight, size: 328 pages | 398g | 133*200*20mm
- ISBN13: 9791141610258
- ISBN10: 1141610256
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