화장

For two years the narrator, a senior manager with a cosmetics maker, has looked after his wife as a brain tumour wore her away, and all that time he has quietly loved Chu Eun-ju, a young woman on his staff. When his wife dies he sits through the deathbed, the funeral rites and the crematorium, troubled by an ailing bladder of his own, while at the office a campaign for new products demands his decisions. The Korean word of the title means both cremation and make-up, and the story lays the two side by side: a body burned to ash and faces made beautiful.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Short story

Length

372 pages in the original

Genres

Family, Love (assigned by AI)

Set in

South Korea

First published

2003 by Munhak Sasang

Author's age

55 when first published

ISBN

9788970126241 (original)