What we’re about
This is a biweekly group devoted to reading and discussing modern literature. Our goal is to read through modern classics - sometimes in series, and sometimes breaking up longer works into multiple parts that we discuss across two or more meetings. Our current theme is speculative fiction: fantastic fiction including science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism, slipstream, surrealism, weird fiction, etc.
Over the years, we've tackled series on the works of James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Vladimir Nabokov. We've devoted entire years to specific themes: a year on works from Latin American and Portuguese language writers, one spent reading African and African diaspora writers, another on central and eastern European literature, and another on works from east, south, southeast, and central Asian literature. And, every once in a while, we just throw in whatever book seems interesting to folks in group. Come join our ever-growing group to meet with friendly people and talk about great books!
Upcoming events
26
Ice, by Anna Kavan
독수리다방, 서대문구 연세로 36, Korea, al, KRJoin us as we continue our tour of speculative fiction by discussing Kavan's classic novel!
Publisher's description:
"This dystopian science fiction classic details the hallucinatory hunt for a white-haired girl, through a frozen, post-apocalyptic landscape
'A haunting story of sexual assault and climate catastrophe, decades ahead of its time' – The New Yorker
'A strange and compelling classic of dystopian and climate fiction, one that with foreboding and deep compassion maps the psyche and the terrain of dislocation' – Jeff VanderMeer
Anticipating climate fiction and the New Weird literary genre, while garnering fans from Doris Lessing and J.G. Ballard to China Miéville and Patti Smith since it was first published in 1967, this fantasia about predatory male sexual behavior during an apocalyptic climate catastrophe reads as though author Anna Kavan had seen the future.
Ice is slowly covering the entire globe; as the glacial tide creeps forward, the fabric of society begins to break down. Through this chaotic landscape, a nameless narrator hunts for the white-haired girl he once loved - or perhaps wishes to annihilate. Battling a powerful enemy known only as the Warden, he travels through nightmarish and ever-shifting scenes, where the object of his obsession remains constantly just out of reach. She is guarded by the Warden and by a cruel older woman who wishes her ill – but each time the narrator seems poised to rescue her the encroaching ice wreaks violence on her fragile body, or his own base nature sends him hurtling onward in his kaleidoscopic pursuit. Again and again the girl appears, but inevitably she eludes him.
This dystopian classic, the last book Anna Kavan published in her lifetime, renders her apocalyptic vision of environmental devastation and possessive violence in unforgettable, propulsive, oneiric prose."
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
Our plan is to meet at Dokdabang Cafe (독수리 다방) in Sinchon, which is on the 8th floor of the building indicated on the map linked to on this page. The address of Dokdabang is 36, Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03776. Below are Kakao Maps and Naver Maps links to the cafe:
https://kko.kakao.com/-U2GDIbg1b
If you plan to attend this meeting and would like updates you can join our ‘Reading Modern Lit active’ OpenChat on KakaoTalk. Feel free to leave and return to this chat based on your activity. The purpose of this chat is to better gauge who plans to attend our meetings as there are often no-shows.
Reading Modern Lit (active)
https://open.kakao.com/o/gaqP0Hre9 attendees
Book & Film Crossover! - The Melancholy of Resistance, by László Krasznahorkai
Location not specified yetWe're collaborating again with the Seoul Film Meetup Group! Join us to discuss recent Nobel recipient László Krasznahorkai's surreal apocalyptic novel The Melancholy of Resistance. Then, on November 29th the Seoul Film Meetup Group will have a meeting to discuss Béla Tarr's film adaptation of the novel, Werckmeister Harmonies (2000).
Publisher's description:
"WINNER OF THE 2025 NOBEL PRIZE
The Hungarian master’s first work to appear in English, and still one of the best....The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumors. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find music, cosmology, fascism. The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender center of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, 'is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type.' And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of The Guardian, 'lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds.'"
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
Our plan is to meet at Dokdabang Cafe (독수리 다방) in Sinchon, which is on the 8th floor of the building indicated on the map linked to on this page. The address of Dokdabang is 36, Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03776. Below are Kakao Maps and Naver Maps links to the cafe:
https://kko.kakao.com/-U2GDIbg1b
If you plan to attend this meeting and would like updates you can join our ‘Reading Modern Lit active’ OpenChat on KakaoTalk. Feel free to leave and return to this chat based on your activity. The purpose of this chat is to better gauge who plans to attend our meetings as there are often no-shows.
Reading Modern Lit (active)
https://open.kakao.com/o/gaqP0Hre4 attendees
The Word for World is Forest, by Ursula K. Le Guin
Location not specified yetJoin us as we continue our tour through speculative fiction by discussing Le Guin's seminal ecological novel!
Publisher's description:
"Hugo Award Winner, 1973
Long before Avatar, Ursula K. Le Guin was writing science fiction with a strong ecological edge, the benchmark of which was the 1973 novella, The Word for World is Forest. Now, with the continuing trend toward human rights and green issues, the time is right for new fans to be moved by this Hugo-winning classic.
In this thought-provoking story, the existence of the peaceful Athsheans is altered when their world is conquered by the bloodthirsty yumens. Pressed into servitude, they find themselves at the mercy of their brutal masters…until desperation leads them to launch a retaliatory strike. But in defending their lives, they will threaten the very foundations of their society. And once the killing starts, there is no turning back."
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
Our plan is to meet at Dokdabang Cafe (독수리 다방) in Sinchon, which is on the 8th floor of the building indicated on the map linked to on this page. The address of Dokdabang is 36, Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03776. Below are Kakao Maps and Naver Maps links to the cafe:
https://kko.kakao.com/-U2GDIbg1b
If you plan to attend this meeting and would like updates you can join our ‘Reading Modern Lit active’ OpenChat on KakaoTalk. Feel free to leave and return to this chat based on your activity. The purpose of this chat is to better gauge who plans to attend our meetings as there are often no-shows.
Reading Modern Lit (active)
https://open.kakao.com/o/gaqP0Hre3 attendees
Book TBA
Location not specified yetJoin us as we
Publisher's description:
If you don't have a physical copy of the book, you can find a copy of it here:
Our plan is to meet at Dokdabang Cafe (독수리 다방) in Sinchon, which is on the 8th floor of the building indicated on the map linked to on this page. The address of Dokdabang is 36, Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03776. Below are Kakao Maps and Naver Maps links to the cafe:
https://kko.kakao.com/-U2GDIbg1b
If you plan to attend this meeting and would like updates you can join our ‘Reading Modern Lit active’ OpenChat on KakaoTalk. Feel free to leave and return to this chat based on your activity. The purpose of this chat is to better gauge who plans to attend our meetings as there are often no-shows.
Reading Modern Lit (active)
https://open.kakao.com/o/gaqP0Hre1 attendee
Past events
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