Winter in Sokcho

It's winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border of South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous ; beyond the beach guns point out from the North's watchtowers. A young French-Korean woman works as a receptionist in a run-down guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives : a French graphic novelist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.
The two form an uneasy relationship. She agrees to accompany him on his trips to discover an "authentic" Korea and they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls. But he takes no interest in the real Sokcho she knows : the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she is pulled into his drawings, she is troubled by his vision of her - until she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.

An exquisitely crafted debut, which won the Prix Robert Walser, WINTER IN SOKCHO is a novel about shared identities and divided selves, vision and blindness, intimacy and alienation. Elisa Shua Dusapin's voice is distinctive and unmistakable.