WINNER OF THE MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE
‘An authentic, moving story that brings to vivid life the deep family connections that lie at the core of Korean culture’
Gary Shteyngart
‘Kyung-Sook Shin’s tale… has hit a nerve’
Guardian
‘A raw tribute to the mysteries of motherhood’
New York Times
‘The most moving and accomplished, and often startling, novel’
Wall Street Journal
When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mother?
Told through the piercing voices and urgent perspectives of a daughter, son, husband, and mother, PLEASE LOOK AFTER MOTHER is at once an authentic picture of contemporary life in Korea and a universal story of family love.
With an introduction by Banana Yoshimoto
A W&N Essential
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Reviews
The most moving and accomplished, and often startling, novel in translation I've read in many seasons ... Every sentence is saturated in detail ... It tells an almost unbearably affecting story of remorse and belated wisdom that reminds us how globalism-at the human level-can tear souls apart and leave them uncertain of where to turn
shin's prose, intimate, and hauntingly spare, powerfully conveys grief's bewildering immediately . . . A raw tribute to the mysteries of motherhood
Affecting . . . Poignant and psychologically revealing . . . Readers should find resonance in this family story, a runaway bestseller poised for a similar run here
A moving Korean novel questions the reliability of memory
A moving portrayal of the surprising nature, sudden sacrifices, and secret reveries of motherhood
An extraodinary novel about regret and our relations with those we love
Kyung-Sook Shin's tale... has hit a nerve'
Kyung-Sook Shin's tale of an elderly woman who goes missing on the Seoul underground has hit a nerve
A captivating story, written with an understanding of the shortcomings of traditional ways of modern life. It is nostalgic but unsentimental, brutally well observed and, in this flawlessly smooth translation by Chi-Young Kim, it offers a sobering account of a vanished past. ... We must hope there will be more translations to follow
Please Look After Mother made me want to phone my mum
