"A captivating
story...nostalgic but unsentimental,
brutally well observed and, in this flawlessly
smooth translation by Chi-Young Kim, it
offers a sobering account of a vanished past....
We must hope there
will be more translations to follow"
"Food is a well-traveled literary metaphor, but here, in a translation by Chi-Young Kim, Jo does marvelous and disturbing things with it, serving up dishes rich with a variety of feelings."
"Coolly written and composed as intricately and artfully as a Chinese box....
The result is eerie, hypnotic and not without humor,
like latter-day Camus filtered through a cinematic sensibility."
