While browsing a tiny bookshop at Koreatown in New York a few weeks ago, the slim yellow cover of “Where Would You Like To Go?” caught my eye. I purchased it immediately and placed it on my lap as I sipped my iced drink and K-pop blasted in the background of the cafe I had settled into.
I was instantly whisked along on a journey with Korean author Kim Ae-ran, translated by Jamie Chang, as her narrator, Myeongji, navigates a physical and emotional world void of the person who had filled her days and her heart.
Even after weeks have passed, I vividly remember the scene in which she made kimchi for the first time. I felt like I was there with her. I could smell it. I could feel the texture. I was there making it with her.
After the sudden loss of her husband, the protagonist accepts an invitation to house-sit her cousin’s home abroad. While boarding a train from London to Edinburgh, she takes us along.
The story snakes into moments of grief, longing and quiet joy, moving in short, sharp sentences that suddenly soften into passages that linger.
Published in 2016, Ae-ran’s work emerges as an imaginative and leading contemporary fiction voice.
The book is especially striking given the climate for Korean literature after Spring 2014, when poets, novelists and critics faced a radical, difficult environment for publishing and creative expression.
In that context, Ae-ran’s work stands out for its resilience, clarity and the way it delicately threads grief, humor and intimacy through stories that remain deeply personal yet widely resonant.
Ae-ran is no stranger to the world of words. She is an award-winning millennial Korean author who studied playwriting at Korea National University of Arts. She made her debut in 2002 with “The House People Don’t Knock On” and quickly became known for her sharp observations and quiet intensity, capturing memory, longing and the subtle heartbreaks of daily life.
Since then, she has won numerous awards and cemented her reputation as one of Korea’s most compelling contemporary voices.
Chang’s English translation deserves its own note. She brings Ae-ran’s textured prose to life, preserving its rhythm and emotional weight while making it effortless to read in English.
While, sadly, I can’t read the original text in Korean, critics seem to agree that Chang has ensured that the original voices remain vivid in the works she translates.
One thing I loved about this work is that one side of the book is in English and the other in Korean, letting the original words in the original form sit side-by-side on the page as a visual echo of the language in which it was written.
After we go on this trip — while still seated — the story leaves us with the very question its title asks: Where would you like to go?
