Sohn Won-pyung 

About

Sohn Won-pyung (b.1979) earned BA in social studies and philosophy at Sogang University and film directing at Korean Academy of Film Arts. She won the Film Review Award of the 6th Cine21 in 2001. Her movie script “I believe in the moment” won the Science Fantasy Writers’ Award in 2006. She also wrote and directed a number of short films including Oooh You Make Me Sick (2005), and A Two-way Monologue (2007). 

She made her literary debut in 2017 when her first full-length novel Almond won the Changbi Prize for Young Adult Fiction, immediately garnering rave reactions from the readers. A new generation of a storyteller, she wrote her next full-length novel, Born in 1988 which won Jeju 4.3 Peace Literary Award. She is active in both movie and literary scenes as a film director, screenwriter, and novelist.

Books

ALMOND

Changi Publishers,2018  
Over 200,000 copies sold since April. Sold to Taiwan and Vietnam.
WEL rights sold in pre-empt to Tara Parsons of VIA, HarperCollins.

Like CATCHER IN THE RYE or EAST OF EDEN of their times, I think ALMOND  speaks to our times ; a time when we are so bombarded with social media and information that feeling numb is the norm.  This unique coming-of-age story is about a boy without emotions but who, nonetheless,  through motherly and grandmotherly love, practice, diligence and persistence, learns how to become ever so humane with more guts and bravery than we could imagine.  A boy born with a condition where he cannot feel emotions, Yunjae has trouble feeling emotions because of his naturally small amygdalae, also called the almonds. He cannot even feel fear or anger. He is cared for by his young single mother who has struggled financially but is making a go of it by opening her own second hand bookstore, and his steely strong grandmother, who has has accepted her wayward daughter and baby despite past argument and is as devoted and loving as any grandmother could be.  Grandmother and mother drill into  him pointers for socially appropriate responses such as laughing when others do so and saying, “Thank you” when others do.  They leave post-it notes everywhere to remind him of what normal human responses are and how to act.  They just want him to fit in and be accepted.  They worry about how he will manage in the world.  But, thanks to their devoted love, he manages to grow without causing much trouble.  But on his sixteenth birthday, Christmas Eve, he loses them to a shocking, random act of violence. “Why did he kill my family, why?” Yunjae tries to find answers to the tragedy but to no avail. He is left alone in the world, until one day troubled 17 year old Gon appears in his life.  Gon lost his family in the crowd when he was young, leading him to wander from one shelter after another ever since. He is reunited with his family after thirteen years, but he has become a troublemaker full of rage. Gon vents his anger on Yunjae only to be stumped by the emotionless reaction. To Yunjae, Gon sparks his curiosity rather than hatred. Yunjae thinks if he gets to know Gon who is full of strong emotions, he could somehow learn emotions himself. And so, the two develop an unlikely friendship that no one can understand. As Yunjae meets and interacts with different individuals such as his neighbor Dr. Shim and his classmate Dora, something slowly changes in him… and when Gon’s life is at risk, it is Yunjae who steps outside every comfort zone and way of being he has lived before, to become a most unlikely hero.  

Counterattack at Thirty

EunHaeng NaMu Publishers

The writer Son Won-pyung who left a deep impression to readers with her first full-length novel ‘Almond’ presented her second novel ‘The Counterattack of Thirty’. It is an enjoyable novel that draws the special ‘one shot’ of the young generation that live in consciousness of authority, falsehood, unjust, and structure of exploitation that are widespread in the Korean society.

NEWs

Library Journal Review of Almond
Award-winning South Korean screenwriter/director Sohn’s intimate and surprising debut novel features Yunjae, born with a condition that limits his ability to experience or even recognize emotion; in his brain, the almond-shaped organs governing feelings are smaller than normal. But this novel is not about disability, instead examining our capacity to connect. Yunjae’s mother works tirelessly to teach him how to manage in a world he can’t read and reaches out to her own estranged mother, who becomes a sharp-witted, doting grandma. When they are lost in a terrible Christmas eve shooting (it’s Yunjae’s 16th birthday), he soldiers on, helped by a sympathetic neighbor. At school, his imperturbability stymies the gangsterish Gon, who initially bullies him but then befriends him while inadvertently leading him to a dangerous edge. Will Gon and Yunjae’s secret crush, Dora, help Yunjae learn to feel? VERDICT Impressively portraying Yunjae’s shrugged-shoulder calm and efforts to understand his world, Sohn offers a heartening study of human emotion.