“This book is the work that most deeply imbues me with my breath and soul.”

The True Classic of Our Time: The Other Side of Life
A revised edition presented with a complete new look

Lee Seung-woo's early masterpiece, 『The Other Side of Life』, is presented in a carefully curated edition as the 32nd volume of the Munhakdongne Korean Literature Collection.
『The Other Side of Life』, which also won the first Daesan Literary Award, has been continuously reprinted since its publication in 1992, establishing itself as a rare steady seller in Korean literature.
Now, more than 30 years later, the revised edition, which can truly be called the "definitive edition," is presented to readers with a comprehensive revision of sentences without altering the content, and with commentary by Kim Hwa-young, a French literature scholar and literary critic, along with a new author's note.
The author also stated, “This book is the work that most deeply contains my breath and soul,” and it is no exaggeration to say that “The Other Side of Life” is “a single book that penetrates all the layers of his world of work, like a harpoon” (p. 128).
If you want to fully experience the essence and spirit of the master Lee Seung-woo, and his passionate and dynamic youth, 『The Other Side of Life』 will definitely be your master key.

"The Other Side of Life" begins from the perspective of the novelist 'I' who was asked to write about the life of the author 'Park Bu-gil'.
"To understand him" "To complete the chronology 1" "Bread on Earth" "A familiar ending" "To complete the chronology 2".
This novel, composed of five parts, exposes the process of writing the biography of ‘Park Bu-gil,’ inserts Park Bu-gil’s novel in its entirety, develops the literary theory of the narrator ‘I’ who writes it, and inserts the voice of the author ‘Lee Seung-woo’ who encompasses all of this, creating a world of “multiplicity like a living, layered mirror” (Kim Hwa-young).
These multi-layered voices come together and, combined with motifs of 'novel within a novel,' 'narrator and author,' 'author and reader,' and 'reality and story,' create a 'novel' and 'world' called 'The Other Side of Life.'

A novel by a novelist who doggedly pursues the life of a man who says, “Instead of saying I love you, I will study theology and become a pastor” (p. 212), and dreams “a futile attempt to restore the writer’s reality before the novel” (p. 221).
『The Other Side of Life』, which is both an 'autofiction' featuring numerous 'I's' and a place for 'metafiction' with layered interactions, is preparing to be reborn with new readers at this very moment through traces of deep reflection on literature and religion, wide-ranging allusions to myths and symbols, seething pathos, and enigma (riddles) that cannot be resolved into a single thing.
A story with endless presentness - a story with self-producing power.
Another way to put it would be "immortality," and wouldn't a book possessing that energy be considered a "classic"? In that sense, "The Other Side of Life" is undoubtedly a "contemporary classic" of Korean literature.

What if we started by saying that the novelist already had a novel before he started writing it?
--- p.12

“Well then, goodbye now, my times of shame.
“I will never return to you again.”
--- p.88

What matters is not the degree of love, or its presence or absence, but its direction.
--- p.103

All past is only a remembered past, and all memories are only censored or selective memories.
Time is poisonous, and my self is a huge, tiny universe surrounded by too many layers.
There is truth in every layer, and that truth is true only in that layer.
--- p.128

We cannot show destiny.
But fate can be shown in any number of ways.
Destiny is not here or there, it is where you pronounce it.
--- p.174

But when readers encounter overlap between the work and the author's life, they naturally feel curious.
Of course, the author does not copy his own life as it is.
Not only do they not try to do that, they cannot.
(…) You write it down as it is? Who could possibly do that? Facts remembered or spoken are ultimately just excerpts.
‘Facts’ are constructed through selection and exclusion.
There is refraction and distortion involved.
That's the work.
--- pp.218~219

Without life, without facts, there is no fiction.
Therefore, what we must discover in the novel is the author's intimate voice hidden in the fragments, not the restoration of facts pieced together from the fragments.
But the reader is outside the book, and the writer's writings are trapped inside the book.
The reader must enter the book to meet the author.
By reading the novels written by an author, the reader discovers fragments revealed or hidden in each novel and combines them based on his or her own experiences and imagination, thereby creating a writer of his or her own.
In that sense, without fiction, there is no life, that is, no facts.
--- pp.220~221

What gives meaning to selfishness if not love?
What else but love could give us such an unexpected and unimaginable thrill?
--- p.248

Love also requires skill.
If there is a skill to be learned and mastered in life, it must be love.
Because there is nothing more precious and valuable than love.
When we don't learn to love, love often becomes a weapon that hurts people.
--- p.303

His writing was, so to speak, like a prayer.

--- p.347