I stopped it immediately.’ĭusapin creates a delicate portrait of a woman navigating the peripheries of self, unsure to which identity she belongs. ‘I looked at the image and began mouthing words under my breath in French. At the core of Winter in Sokcho, are questions of identity and belonging: But despite his constant rejections, for the narrator, he is compelling her intrigue intensified by a longing for the French father she never knew. He refuses to taste the narrator’s cooking and eats only Dunkin’ Donuts. He’s an utterly unenthusiastic tourist, Dusapin designing a character insufferable in his own intolerance. To him, only Italians know what to do with noodles. He is dismissive of the Korean narrator, speaking to her ‘while he looked around for something else,’ choosing his own pen when she offers him a pencil. He looked through me, without seeing me.’įrom the very first pages, Kerrand’s Western masculinity subsumes the plot. He put his suitcase down at my feet and pulled off his hat. ‘He arrived muffled up in a woollen coat. Dusapin writes with a unique simplicity, the burgeoning atmosphere built through curt statement and distinct images: The novel begins with the arrival of Yan Kerrand, a French artist looking to set his final comic book on the shores of Sokcho. Theme exceeds action in this gentle and melancholic reflection of an anonymous narrator who works in Old Park’s guest house, spending her days off in her childhood home where she shares a bed with her mother. That was Sokcho, always waiting, for tourists, boats, men, spring.’ Winter in Sokcho is a masterfully crafted tale of identity, alienation and longing, set against the backdrop of a town that, too, seeks reconciliation. Its neon lights still flash and the stench of fresh fish still hangs in the air but the beach runs bare. The Sokcho in Elisa Shua Dusapin’s award-winning novel is not the bustling, bright tourist town on the border between South and North Korea that some know it as.
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