Please Look After Mom
Divided into four sections and an epilogue, the book allows several family members to weigh in on the shared crisis, often in an intimate second-person narration: “You all blamed each other for Mom’s going missing, and you all felt wounded.” Chi-hon, the elder daughter and now a noted novelist, comes first, followed by elder son Hyong-chol, then the father and, ultimately, the missing Park So-nyo herself. These accumulating voices form a kind of instrumental suite, each segment joined by the same melody of family nostalgia, guilt and apology, and each occasionally plucking away at several larger motifs: country vs. city living, illiteracy vs. education, arranged marriages vs. modern dating, traditions vs. new freedoms.
Kyung-sook Shin
Kyung-sook Shin (born 12 January 1963) is a South Korean writer. She is the first Korean and first woman to win the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012 for Please Look After Mom. Even though the book has been translated and published in 32 countries and gained popularity worldwide, it is the first time it has picked up an award outside Korea. The judges described Please Look After Mom as a "dynamic" and "moving" account of the complex web of relationships of a Korean family, which also explores "what it means to be a mother."
