dd’s Umbrella
by Hwang Jungeun / translated from korean by e. yaewon
What was it they were battling? Their smallness, of course, their smallness.
A delicate and arresting queer novel from one of Korea’s most celebrated contemporary writers.
d, a nonbinary gig worker living in Seoul, briefly escapes the grasp of isolation when they meet dd, only to be ensnared by grief when dd dies in a car accident. Meanwhile, the world around them reckons with the 2014 Sewol ferry disaster that left more than 300 dead.
As formally inventive as it is evocative, dd’s Umbrella is composed of twin novellas. The first is told from the perspective of d, and the second from the perspective of a writer researching a book they may never write. Both figures dwell in society’s margins—queer, working-class, and part of nontraditional family structures.
As people across Korea come together to protest the government’s handling of the Sewol ferry disaster, and to impeach the right-wing president in office, the novel examines how progressive movements coexist with social exclusion, particularly of women and sexual minorities, invisibilised in service of the ‘greater cause’.
dd’s Umbrella is a meditative and off-centre novel about mourning and revolution.
Praise
‘With reflections on the South Korean government’s chilling response to earlier student demonstrations and the aftermath of the ferry tragedy, Hwang shines an illuminating light on the repression that persists amid social progress. It’s a tender and revealing portrait of characters on the margins.’ — Publishers Weekly
‘dd’s Umbrella presents the uncertainty of life and the ever-presence of grief and discrimination to ultimately communicate the importance of showing up for others, to offer them space under an umbrella when it’s raining’ —Asian Review of Books
‘dd’s Umbrella argues that for each moment that remains alive within the history books, there are individual stories that will be remembered and there will be those that remain unheard – but to the people to who those stories belong, they are the way in which the experience the world’—Singapore Unbound
‘Like Hwang’s previous novels, this book is a tender, spooky portrait of outcast friends and lovers’ — Briefly Noted, The New Yorker
contributors’ details
Born in 1976, Hwang Jungeun is one of the bright young things of Korean literature, having published three collections of short stories and four novels to date. One Hundred Shadows (2010), her first novel, was both a critical and commercial success; its mix of oblique fantasy, hard-edge social critique, and offbeat romance garnered the Hankook Ilbo Literary Award and the Korean Booksellers’ Award. Her next novel I’ll Go On, translated by e. yaewon was published in 2018 and received the Daesan Literary Prize.
e. yaewon 이예원 translates from and into Korean. Her translations include Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow, Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood, Samuel Beckett’s Murphy, Hwang Jungeun’s I’ll Go On, Deborah Levy’s Things I Don’t Want to Know and The Cost of Living, Ali Smith’s Hotel World and Winter, and co-translations of Han Kang’s Greek Lessons (with Deborah Smith) and We Do Not Part (with Paige Aniyah Morris).
more information:
Publication date: 8 February 2024 (UK) | 15 April 2025 (North America)
Format: B-format paperback (198 mm x 129 mm)
Extent: 256pp
Rights held: WEL
ISBNs: 978-1-911284-94-9 (paperback) / 978-1-911284-93-2 (ebook)
