Yi T’aejun was one of twentieth-century Korea’s true masters of the short story—and a man who in 1946 stunned his contemporaries by moving to the Soviet-occupied northern zone of his country. In South Korea, where he is known today as “one who went north,” Yi’s work was banned until 1988. His momentous decision did not lead him to a safe haven, however: though initially welcomed into the literary establishment, North Korea sent him into internal exile in the 1950s, and little is known of his fate.

Dust and Other Stories offers a selection of Yi’s stories across time and place, showcasing a superb stylist caught up in the midst of his era’s most urgent ideological and aesthetic divides. This collection unites his earlier modernist masterpieces from the colonial era with his little-known work penned during North Korea’s founding years, offering a rare glimpse into the making—and crossing—of the border between south and north. During the turbulent final years of Japanese rule, Yi’s elegant yet subdued stories championed both his native tongue and the belief in the capacity of art. In the heavily politicized environment of the North, his later works maintain a faith in the art of storytelling and a concern for the disappearance of customs in the throes of modernization. Throughout both eras, Yi focused on ordinary people: old men struggling to understand a changing world, lovers meeting up among ancient ruins, a lively widow targeted by a literacy campaign, a bourgeois couple trying to sustain themselves during the war by breeding rabbits, and more. Magnificently translated by Janet Poole, Yi’s work bears witness to global turmoil with a melancholic sense of enduring beauty.

"Reminiscent of comic naturalists like Gogol and Guy de Maupassant, Yi excelled at portraiture." - Wall Street Journal

"This book of short stories captures the precarious daily life of ordinary Koreans under post-war occupation." - International Examiner

"Yi T’aejun’s charming stories about everyday Koreans made him one of the country’s most beloved writers. But with the onset of World War II, Yi went from a contemplative chronicler of the world around him to a political firebrand. He defected to the North in 1946, and subsequently his books were banned from publication in South Korea (a prohibition that would last 40 years). Dust, a new collection of Yi’s short stories selected and translated by the Korean scholar Janet Poole, offers a chronological survey of his life’s work to explain how so drastic a transformation came about." - Harvard Review

"Translator Poole’s impressive introduction not only contextualizes Yi’s significance in the Korean canon but champions the rightful restoration of his erased stature, an unfortunate result of Yi’s 1946 Seoul-to- Pyongyang move. With Korea’s 1950 separation came the censorship of Yi’s work on both sides of the thirty-eighth parallel. . . . Loosely linked by Yi’s alter ego, writer Hyn, these stories capture precarious daily life under occupation, the challenges of liberation, and the ensuing chaos of U.S. military control. Extraordinary as both historical record and illuminating literature, Yi’s stories reveal modern Korea through the voices of young women unbroken by destitution, lonely traitors searching for companionship, aging friends reliving lost youth, jobless men dreaming of comfort, even truculent old women finally lured into literacy." - Booklist (starred review)

"An excellent collection of stories and historical insights, showing us that reflecting on past events is far easier than predicting how history will unfold. Of course, it’s also, coincidentally, a rather timely publication. . . . when all Koreans are hoping for another small step towards peace on the peninsula, perhaps Yi’s story is a necessary and telling reminder of the human cost of international politics" - Tony's Reading List

"Yi T’aejun was among Korea’s most acclaimed short-story writers. . . . This collection, assembled and translated by University of Toronto historian Janet Poole, brings together 12 of his best short fiction, spanning his entire career, written in both the south and the north." - The Toronto Star

"This book is a must read in post-colonial literary criticism as well as in colonial- and Cold War-period Korean literature." - Acta Koreana

"[Yi's] urge to preserve culture and bear witness to history make the thematic positioning of this short-story collection particularly salient in today’s political climate." - World Literature Today

"Offers intriguing short stories that look at the effects of the colonial era and liberation on writers and teachers, as well as observations about life in North Korea in the years just after the partition." - Korean Quarterly