Synopsis "The Waiting "

The story begins with a mother's confession...sisters permanently separated by a border during the Korean WarKeum Suk Gendry-Kim was an adult when her mother revealed a family secret: She had been separated from her sister during the Korean War. It's not an uncommon story--the peninsula was split across the 38th parallel, dividing one country into two. As many fled violence in the north, not everyone was able to make it south. Her mother's story inspired Gendry-Kim to begin interviewing her and other Koreans separated by the war; that research fueled a deeply resonant graphic novel. The Waiting is the fictional story of Gwija, told by her novelist daughter Jina. When Gwija was 17 years old, after hearing that the Japanese were seizing unmarried girls, her family married her in a hurry to a man she didn't know. Japan fell, Korea gained its independence, and the couple started a family. But peace didn't come. The young family of four fled south. On the road, while breastfeeding and changing her daughter, Gwija was separated from her husband and son. Then seventy years passed. Seventy years of waiting. Gwija is now an elderly woman and Jina can't stop thinking about the promise she made to help find her brother. Expertly translated from the Korean by the award-winning translator Janet Hong, The Waiting is the devastating followup to Gendry-Kim's Grass, which appeared on best of the year lists from the New York Times, The Guardian, Library Journal, and more.

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim

(Author)

View Author's Page

Keum Suk Gendry-Kim was born in Goheung, in the Jeolla province (South Korea). She graduated in Fine Arts from Sejong University in Seoul, and completed her artistic training at the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg. She lived seventeen years in France and began publishing by drawing her first graphic novels for the French market, among which we highlight Le chant de mon père (2012) and Jiseul (2015), as well as L'arbre nu (2020); she has also illustrated numerous children's books and translated more than a hundred books. Grass (2017) is her first book in Korean and the one that has given her the most international projection, translated into fourteen languages and winner of the Antifaz Award for Best International Comic Published in Spain, among other prestigious awards. Following this were Jun (2019) and The Waiting (2021)

See less