A “magnificent” (Ha Jin), “mesmerizing” (James McBride), and “magical” (Marie Myung-Ok Lee) 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.
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“A magnificent novel with a grand vision and assured execution. —Ha Jin, author of Waiting
“Powerful . . . A harrowing coming-of-age story.”—Best of Korea, 2023’s Best Books by Korean Americans
“Ambitious and expansive.”—New Yorker
“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)
“Precious, life-altering, rebellious, funny, and full of a necessary truth.”—Alexander Chee, author of Queen of the Night
“Mesmerizing.”—James McBride, author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
“A magical, brutal novel that shines light into a 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
“A courageous and profound novel.”—Kirkus
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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.
PRODUCT DETAILS
ISBN: 9781954118485
Price: $19.00
On-sale date: 4/30/24
Weight: 13 oz
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 SUNY New Paltz, where he teaches creative writing, Asian and Asian American literature, and film, he is also a folklorist, who has edited anthologies of Korean folklore and translated seminal folktales and Buddhist texts. A section of Skull Water appeared in the New Yorker. Fenkl lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.