Winter in Sokcho
by Elisa Shua Dusapin
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Looking for a spoiler-free take on Winter in Sokcho?
Here’s what it’s about, why it unsettled me in the best way, and why I keep returning to its silences.
What It’s About
Set in a faded tourist town on the edge of the Korean peninsula, this quietly haunting novel follows a young French-Korean woman working at a guesthouse in the off-season. A visiting artist arrives. Snow falls. Nothing happens and everything does.
It’s a novel about what can’t be said, what slips between identities, and the places we go to feel more alone on purpose.
My Take
Quiet, unsettling, and beautifully unresolved.
This is a book that barely raises its voice and that’s what makes it so disarming. Dusapin’s prose is spare, like snow that’s just started to fall, but underneath is tension, longing, discomfort.
It’s about the hunger to connect and the impossibility of doing so when you don’t fully know who you are. I read it slowly, then again. And even now, I’m still thinking about the silences, the spaces, the ache.
Would I Recommend It?
Yes, especially for readers who love emotionally restrained fiction where mood is everything.
Read it if you liked:
Stories where nothing explodes—but everything trembles
Where to Read It:
Buy on Amazon • Join the conversation in the My Asian Era book club on Fable
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