BookPage Chooses Forgotten Country as a Top Pick In Fiction

Thanks BookPage, for the great review and the interview!

The Review:

“Recently named one of Granta’s New Voices, Chung is a remarkable writer, willing to dig fearlessly under her characters’ surface motivations. Her style is elegant but never clinical, and her judicious use of Korean folktales amplifies the themes of sacrifice, duty and expectation. Chung is especially successful in the depiction of the intense cauldron of emotion between siblings. The novel ends with a resolution that is satisfying but in no way pat or formulaic, an indication of her extraordinary talent.”

To read more of the review, click here!

The Interview:

The title of your book is intriguing. Which is the country that is forgotten, Korea or the United States? Or is it a metaphor for what an immigrant has to leave behind?

The title worked in a few different ways that I liked. It refers to Korea—not only the Korea that the family in the book leaves behind, but the Korea that was lost when it was divided. In my book, I wanted the break between the sisters to be a kind of echo of that split—and for the family’s exile from their homeland (where they belonged, where they felt whole) to be an echo of the loss of that older Korea. On a metaphorical level, the title also refers to the sisters’ estrangement—so the forgotten country is their childhood closeness, their innocence and the past.

To read more of the interview, click here!