Description The first Korean translation of Claire Keegan, a finalist for the 2022 Booker Prize Selected by The Times as one of the '50 Best Books Published in the 21st Century,' and the original novella behind the film The Quiet Girl An author Haruki Murakami has admired for over twenty years, at last meets Korean readers! Long regarded as a master in her native Ireland, since 2021 she has gradually become the talk of readers in America—now she is a novelist that readers seek out eagerly, as if trying to make up for lost time. This is the story of Claire Keegan, a leading figure in contemporary Irish literature often called "a writer who appears only once a generation." In 2004, Haruki Murakami included one of her stories in the revised edition of his anthology of foreign short stories, Birthday Stories, praising her: "Keegan writes spare sentences with spare words, and combines them to build spare scenes." The Guardian has described her work as "rare and precious, like a diamond in a coal mine"—fitting, since in twenty-four years of writing she has published only four books. With this small body of work, Keegan has won numerous awards including the Orwell Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, the William Trevor Prize, and the Edge Hill Prize, and her most recent work, Small Things Like These, made the 2022 Booker Prize shortlist, cementing her name firmly among critics and readers alike. Foster is the first of Claire Keegan's works to be introduced in Korea. Winner of the 2009 Davy Byrnes Award, this book first appeared in an abridged form in The New Yorker in February 2010, before being published in full as a standalone novella that October—an unusual feat for a work of its length. In Ireland, it has remained part of the school curriculum since its release, becoming a novel read by virtually the entire nation. In 2022, it was adapted into the film The Quiet Girl by director Colm Bairéad, becoming the first Irish film to be shortlisted for Best International Feature Film at the 95th Academy Awards, and winning two awards at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival. The film is set to open in Korea on May 31 this year. A girl sent to stay with relatives for a summer, where she experiences tender care and love for the first time This book unfolds over a summer that a young girl living in rural Ireland spends at the home of distant relatives. Though never explicitly stated, a mention of the "Irish hunger strikes" on the news suggests the story is set in the early 1980s. The girl, who has not received proper care in her poor household full of children, is sent to stay with distant relatives, the Kinsellas, until her mother gives birth to yet another sibling. What she encounters upon arriving at their home stands in complete contrast to the life she has known. "The moment he took my hand, I realize that my father has never once held it, and I want, for a moment, for him to let go so that I won't have to feel this. It's a hard feeling, but as we walk on, my heart begins to settle. I let the difference between my life at home and my life here just sit there." —pp. 69–70 Unlike her indifferent father, who has never once held her hand, the girl meets an adult who takes her hand and matches his pace to hers, and for the first time she encounters feelings she has never known. In a home where the aunt cares for her with warm attentiveness, and the uncle, though outwardly gruff, quietly conveys his affection, the stark contrast between the two families makes the love and warmth the girl experiences for the first time all the more moving and heartbreaking. In truth, this plot itself is nothing new—but this is precisely where the author's brilliance shines. Keegan takes this potentially old and clichéd story and tells it with such vividness and specificity that it feels utterly unlike any other. Also distinctive to Keegan's fiction is her conscious refusal to rely on the convenient device of "precocious child narrators" that many novels with child narrators adopt. Living up to The New York Times' praise as "one of the best novels ever written with a child narrator," Keegan writes as though she has entered directly into the child's mind. In a conversation with another writer, Keegan revealed that among the details she discovered about her characters was a scene in which the Kinsellas, lying in bed one night, discuss what they should do for this poor girl. Asked why she left this deeply moving moment out of the final text, she replied, "The little girl narrating doesn't know about it. What the girl cannot know, I cannot tell either." Perhaps this is why the girl in the novel is unfamiliar with the rules that govern the adult world, and does not fully understand the sorrow of the Kinsellas' past. Instead, she views the lives of adults through eyes that are innocent yet full of unease, allowing readers to hold both purer hope and more vivid sorrow. In other words, readers come to hope alongside the characters for what they desire, and when those hopes go unfulfilled, an immense grief is conveyed to the reader. A writer who wastes not a single word—Claire Keegan's perfectly and beautifully distilled story "Keegan is a writer who wastes not a word." (The Times) This praise came from a journalist upon the release of Keegan's most recent work, Small Things Like These—noting that after waiting more than a decade for her next book, readers need not be disappointed that it runs only 114 pages. One hallmark of Keegan's fiction is its brevity. As she confessed in one interview, "Much of my work goes into removing the traces of my labor"—in every one of her works, Keegan never stops paring away everything around the essence until only the essential remains. Her philosophy is that because the space is limited, she must work all the harder to determine what she can accomplish within that narrow space. Foster, too, is a short yet expansive work, packed with remarkable density of detail and craft within its brief length—one that reveals something new with every rereading, and rewards readers more the more they read it. Keegan carefully draws back the curtain on the singular world she creates, allowing readers to see, feel, hear, and carry it into their own lives. As the translator writes, "Claire Keegan's prose, which leaves specific interpretation to the reader while conveying atmosphere vividly through precise word choice, is as beautiful as a watercolor—its boundaries blurred, yet its colors vivid." Keegan's profound and delicate empathy, her exquisitely woven details, her dazzling and luminous style and description, combined with a story that is spare yet powerful, come together to feel like a single work of art. Counting only the pages where the story unfolds, Foster is under 100 pages long. Yet this story—clear as if distilled, and beautiful to the point of heartache—will move you more deeply than any thick book you read this year.