Shadows of a Sound: Stories

Hwang, an award-winning author of fiction and poetry, has been writing short stories steadily for half a century. His collection is a representative selection of 27 stories dating from 1937 to 1983. Serviceably translated, these stories portray in sharp detail the harsh lives of the common people during a period of great political instability. Some have the earthy directness of folktales; others reach to address larger themes. All are tinged with a melancholy lyricism. Hwang has a particular affinity for the outcasts of society, and loneliness is the recurrent motif in these vividly evoked tales. - Christine Stenstrom, New York Law Sch . Lib