A fever dream of a novel that interweaves the coming-of-age of a 1970s Korean-American boy grappling with his identity and the impact of intergenerational trauma.
Growing up outside a US military base in South Korea in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Insu—the son of a Korean mother and a German father enlisted in the US Army—spends his days with his “half and half” friends skipping school, selling scavenged Western goods on the black market, watching Hollywood movies, and testing the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. When he hears a legend that water collected in a human skull will cure any sickness, he vows to dig up a skull in order to heal his ailing Big Uncle, a geomancer who has been exiled by the family to a mountain cave to die.
Insu’s quest takes him and his friends on a sprawling, wild journey into some of South Korea’s darkest corners, opening them up to a fantastical world beyond their grasp. Meanwhile, Big Uncle has embraced his solitude and fate, trusting in otherworldly forces Insu cannot access. As he recalls his wartime experiences of betrayal and lost love, Big Uncle attempts to teach his nephew that life is not limited to what we can see—or think we know.
Largely autobiographical and sparkling with magical realism, Skull Water is the story of a boy coming into his own—and the ways the past haunts the present in a country on the cusp of modernity struggling to confront its troubled history. As Insu seeks the wisdom of his ancestors, what he learns, he hopes, will save not just his uncle but himself.
𝖧𝖤𝖨𝖭𝖹 𝖨𝖭𝖲𝖴 𝖥𝖤𝖭𝖪𝖫 Born in South Korea to a German father and a Korean mother, Heinz Insu Fenkl grew up in Korea until he was twelve and then in Germany and the United States. A professor of English at The State University of New York, New Paltz, he is known internationally for his collection of Korean folktales and translations of contemporary Korean fiction and classical Buddhist texts. He is also the author of the novel Memories of My Ghost Brother, a PEN/Hemingway Award finalist and a Barnes & Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection. An excerpt from Skull Water, “Five Arrows,” was first published in the New Yorker. Fenkl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife and daughter.
“An epic story that is as much about the modernization of Korea as the coming-of-age of its protagonist. ... [T]he novel comes into its own in the second half as it unites narrative power with philosophical musing with spectacular results. A courageous and profound novel.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Mesmerizing.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A brilliant novel populated by a wonderful cast of characters and boasting a number of beautifully realized set pieces that will live in the reader’s memory.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“A magnificent novel with a grand vision and assured execution.
—Ha Jin, author of Waiting
“The novel in your hands is something I never knew I’d see, born from things at least two governments hoped to hide. A mixed German Korean boy in 1970s Korea undertakes a quest to save the living with what the dead might know, and he tells us stories across time of this almost-vanished world and the lives of those thrown away by Korean society and American military forces—his family. Precious, life-altering, rebellious, funny, and full of a necessary truth.”
—Alexander Chee, author of Queen of the Night
“A magical, brutal novel that shines light into the little-known world of a modernizing Korea of 1970s with its vestiges of American occupation, along with the mysteries of ancestors and the hungry ghosts of worlds we cannot see.”
—Marie Myung-Ok Lee, author of The Evening Hero
“This is a mesmerizing take on what happens when civil war walks into a nation, leaving scarred humanity in its wake. A fascinating story of a young mixed-race man caught between two cultures, not knowing what to keep and what to leave behind. This touching book, written with grace, does more than deliver a fresh perspective on a forgotten war. It’s proof that the old, peaceful ways defeat the brutality of the new every time, with a blend of spirit, memory, and folklore, some of which is delivered by the magical spirits that walked, and still walk, this earth. We are all the same. We all walk the middle path to get home. I’m so glad that Heinz Insu Fenkl shows us how to get there.”
—James McBride, author of Deacon King Kong
“An elegantly structured, multi-stranded work of the imagination, enhanced by some little-known historical elements, and drawing on a deep well of Korean folklore—and extremely rewarding in all of its many dimensions.”
—Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls' Rising