Contradiction - Yang Gui-ja's full-length novel

Description

Life is not about living by exploring, but about exploring while living.
Mistakes are repeated. That's life... … .

ㆍBook introduction

『Contradiction』 is the third full-length novel published by author Yang Gui-ja in 1998. It entered the bestseller list at an alarming rate just one month after its release, surprising the publishing world and becoming the best-seller of that year, demonstrating the 'power of Yang Gui-ja's novels'. This is a novel that has been shown once again without regret.

Although 15 years have already passed since the first edition was published, this novel, “Contradiction,” is following a very special path. Readers who were in their 20s at the time said that even now that they are married and in their 30s, they still take out 『Contradiction』 and read it again. Every time I reread it, I realize the meaning between the lines in the novel that I didn't know before, or I am surprised by a different interpretation revealed by the power of time, and I do not hesitate to call it "one of the most precious books of my life." What makes 『Contradiction』 special is the fact that most readers do not read it just once, but read it at least twice or three times or more.

I often come across blog reviews that say they have read 『Contradiction』 ten times over. Passionate readers are constantly recording, passing on, and reflecting on sentences in novels, leaving traces behind them. The power of this novel, which has been continuously talked about by readers through its 132nd printing so far, is truly inexplicable.

「Tsuda」, a book publishing company that recently transferred all the copyrights to Yang Gui-ja's novels, kept such readers in mind when publishing a new revised edition of 『Contradiction』. It is presented to readers in a sophisticated hardcover book in order to become a book that can be kept for a long time, a book that can truly be owned as a book of one's life.

ㆍFrom the author’s notes

It may be a new emphasis, but all humans live their lives according to their own interpretation. In order to broaden the scope of interpretation, we should not be satisfied with the dictionary definition but also look at its opposite. On the other side of happiness, there is unhappiness, and on the other side of unhappiness, there is happiness.
Same thing. If we reveal the other side of abundance, there is bound to be poverty, and on the other side of poverty, there is hidden abundance that we cannot find. The opposite word added to a heading is nothing other than the name of a brother who was born as a twin.

ㆍPublisher review

-Understand the contradiction...
The main character of 『Contradiction』 is Ahn Jin-jin, a 25-year-old single woman. Her family includes her strong-willed mother who sells her underwear at the market, her father who wanders around and returns home occasionally while his whereabouts are unknown, and her younger brother, whose life's dream is to become a gangster boss. The aunt, who appears as an important character in the novel, was born as an identical twin to the mother of the main character, An Jin-jin, but her life path is quite different. Her rich aunt is fed up with her boring life and her poor mother has so many misfortunes to deal with that she never gets bored.
The main character, Jinjin Ahn, looks at the lives of his mother and aunt, who are divided into extremes, and begins to seriously think about how to understand this life full of contradictions.

As always with Yang Gui-ja's novels, 『Contradiction』 also plays a big role in vividly embodying the lives of characters that seem schematic at first glance through the author's sharp and delicate sentences. We cannot help but point out Yang Gui-ja's well-thought-out novel structure, which progresses the novel by selecting extremely trivial and insignificant episodes of our daily lives. The author powerfully tells the story he wants to tell through the stark contrast of life, with nothing more or less. This is perhaps the power of Yang Gui-ja's novels.

-Life is about exploring
The author speaks to readers through the main character in the novel. Live your life by observing it carefully. Don't let things happen as they happen, but live prepared to boldly change the direction of your life when the right moment comes. Life is not something you just accept, but something you have to explore and live with, even if it means risking your whole life.
That may be why the main character, An Jin-jin, is twenty-five years old. Many readers in their twenties sympathize with the serious self-censorship of the main character, who ‘is prone to neglecting and being cynical about life’ and ‘passing through life through his fingers without even seriously drawing up a balance sheet regarding life’. Since I leave a book review saying that it made me rethink my life, 『Contradiction』 has achieved the greatest success that a novel can achieve.

-Reply 1998...
『Contradiction』, published in the summer of 1998, was a novel that attracted great attention from the Korean publishing industry, regardless of the intention of the author or the publisher. That year, Korea was at a point when its economic structure was collapsing due to a huge financial crisis. In that year, when the tears of countless unemployed people driven to the streets were reported on TV every day and escaping bailouts was the biggest challenge for the Korean economy, the publishing industry was also struggling.

This novel, published immediately after the IMF crisis, could also be seen as a kind of test bed to gauge whether the publishing industry, which was in a serious recession, could truly recover from the reading market. The publishing industry was watching to see whether the success of Yang Gui-ja's novels, which had previously published full-length novels at three-year intervals and easily sold more than a million copies each time, was possible even during the financial crisis, and 『Contradiction』 was ranked on the bestseller list at a much faster rate than the author's previous novels. I was surprised to see it entering.

The author also said, “These days, when everything has changed so suddenly and we feel anxious and embarrassed, what can novels give us? “I started this novel because I wanted to offer some words of comfort to people who have lost their courage, but this life, entangled in contradictions, is still difficult,” he says through the ‘Author’s Note,’ so in 1998, this novel was like a consolation that year. I hope that this day will be chosen by many readers and serve as an opportunity to interpret life anew.