Hwang, Sog-yong

Centred on three generations of a family of rail workers and a laid-off factory worker staging a high-altitude sit-in, ‘Mater 2-10’ vividly depicts the lives of ordinary working Koreans, starting from the Japanese colonial era, continuing through Liberation, and right up to the twenty-first century. It is at once a powerful account that captures a nation’s longing for a rail line to reconnect North and South, a magical-realist novel that manages to reflect the lives of modern industrial workers, and a culmination of Hwang’s career – a masterpiece thirty years in the making.