The chapters are short, sometimes just a page two, rarely more than several, with blank pages in-between. Winter in Sokcho-filled with such well-observed, sometimes wry detail as the guest house’s wifi password “ilovesokcho, all one word, no capitals”-is a short book, even shorter than its 150 pages would indicate.

He appears to be trying to understand himself. She tries to understand him through his drawings. Skinny one moment, curvaceous the next, arms reaching out, pulling back, the twisting form taking shape beneath his brush. He probably wasn’t used to drawing women, I hadn’t seen many among his characters. The brush stuttered, unsure of the figure’s proportions. His fingers skimmed tentatively across the page. Indeed, much is aimless except the drawing: They-somewhat aimlessly-visit the border or have dinner in what passes locally for a restaurant. There’s a boy, sort of, Jun-oh, but he’s off to modelling school. She is not so much drifting through life as floating, between one thing and another. He is in Sochko because he thinks he’ll find a story there. He draws the old-fashioned way, ink on paper. Winter in Sokcho is a gentle, quiet story of a slowly developing relationship. Winter in Sokcho, Elisa Shua Dusapin, Aneesa Abbas Higgins (trans) (Daunt Books, February 2020 Open Letter, April 2021) With a striking resemblance to the author. A different location for each book, a voyage in monochrome ink wash.

Yan Kerrand, for such is the name on the visitor’s passport, “draws comics”, graphic novels,Ībout a globe-trotting archaeologist. My French origins were still a source of gossip even though it was twenty-three years since my father had seduced my mother and then vanished without a trace. Her mother works in the fish market, cooks an excellent octopus, and is one of the few who can prepare fugo so it isn’t poisonous. In the summer, Sokcho is a beach resort, if not the most upmarket in winter, there is not much going on.

Sokcho is a nondescript seaside town not far from the North Korean border. In the dead of winter, a Frenchman arrives at a small guest house in Sokcho where Franco-Korean author Elisa Shua Dusapin’s narrator works in a dead-end job as receptionist and run-about.

Winter in sokcho