My Woman's Fruit
What do dogs feel like at sunset?
Baby Buddha
One day he
Among the red flowers
Nine Stories
white flowers
River flowing through the railroad

Commentary | The Dance of Plants Towards the Light_Kang Ji-hee
Author's Note

You have to look back to find the trajectory.
Over the course of the three volumes of her short stories, there are some things that have changed and some that have not changed in Han Kang's short stories.
In 『Love of Yeosu』, the lonely and isolated beings who desperately express their longing for humanity and the world, and who leave, abandon, wander, and fall, end up falling out of sync and getting hurt as they clumsily try to accept the world and each other that they so desperately longed for in 『The Fruit of My Woman』.
And in 『Yellow Patterned Eternity』, the will to regenerate and the life force burn even stronger in despair.
The dignified being, still in pain, finally tries to embrace the other.
The place we must eventually return to, the leaves pushing up their veins, the flowers blooming during the recovery period, the natural changes and flow that we tried to capture during the 'connecting the dots' work are in harmony with the work of photographer Lee Jeong-jin used on the cover.


On the other hand, isn't the Han River's fierce question unchanging?
He never lets go of the questions, “I want to live, I must live, how should I live?” and asks about human existence, life and death, and this world throughout his twenty-one novels, but inevitably he cannot reach an answer.
But the question itself, like a faint flame, and the heat of loneliness and delicate sadness that arise from the question, become the force that draws them in the work and keeps us, the ones we love, alive.
Because it has changed but not changed, I have carefully rearranged the arrangement of the novels and touched up some expressions, but left what needed to be left as is.


In response to the author's own question in "The Fruit of My Woman," which previously asked "who," we will now look at the author's newly written words in "Yellow-Patterned Eternity."
I encourage you to retrace that trajectory together.
Someone has been writing alone for over twenty years.
The Han River is still walking.


I know.
The twelve years I spent writing these novels can no longer be returned, nor can I ever meet the vivid self that wrote all these sentences again.
I don't think that fact should be felt as a loss.
This should never be a goodbye, because I am someone who wants to live and keep writing.

―Author's Note (2018), 『Yellow-Striped Eternity』

To a place that is extremely simple, clean, and intuitive
A refreshing sense of life that suddenly comes to you
The Fruit of My Woman

This is the second collection of short stories published five years after the first collection.
Eight short stories, including “The Fruit of My Woman,” which became the seed of the “Vegetarian” series, are presented anew with a changed layout and refined expressions and sentences.
In "The Fruit of My Woman," humans are fragile beings, as easily destroyed as small magpies, but they also fight for life, trying to breathe life into their fragmented and torn lives and be reborn.
Literary critic Kang Ji-hee, who has taken on the new commentary, focuses on the female characters in Han Kang's novels.
“They neither give up nor fight fiercely, but sit quietly, yet they are filled with a desire stronger and more vibrant than anyone else.”
In the title piece, "The Fruit of My Woman," the wife's plans for freedom are halted when she puts her savings into a deposit.
From the beginning, the husband treats his wife's dream of going to "the end of the world," "the farthest place," and "the other side of the world, slowly" as an unrealistic and romantic fantasy (p.
19).
Marriage is to her husband “like the hot water of a bathtub, with everything just warmed up” (p.
35) It was warm, but the wife gradually lost her voice and yearned for sunlight, and blue bruises spread all over her skin.
The day her husband returns from his business trip, his wife has become a plant.
The wife who has turned into a plant becomes more vivid and full of strong energy.
It has become a being that can no longer be hurt or destroyed by anything.
The 'I' of "Baby Buddha" who is tired of superficial married life, the woman who has to endure a listless time in "The River Flowing Through the Railroad," the child in "What Do Dogs Feel Like at Sunset" who wanders with his father who has fallen into madness after his mother leaves, the characters in the novel quietly and fiercely reject the difficult world that weighs them down, and dream of a leap into a clear and bright world through internal struggle.


Author's Note

These are short stories written at fairly long intervals, over a period of seven years after publishing my first collection of creative works, and during that time, I also wrote my first full-length novel for three years.
They say that once you tie up your first collection of short stories, it becomes a knot and changes the next collection.
Rereading these novels, I realized what that meant.
In this book, I am moving forward.
He slowly twists and turns, advancing at a snail's pace, at the maximum speed and strength he can muster.

I changed the arrangement of the novels and revised some expressions.
I bow my head in gratitude to all who helped me place this revised edition of the book alongside my first and third collections of short stories.
I would also like to thank author Lee Jeong-jin for allowing me to use his photo on the cover.

Fall 2018, in Seoul
Han River