Synopsis
A haunting literary debut of a Korean POW learning to adapt to a new life in Brazil from the novelist New York Magazine calls a “quotidian-surreal craft-master.”
Snow Hunters traces the extraordinary journey of Yohan, who defects from his country at the end of the Korean War, leaving his friends and family behind to seek a new life on the coast of Brazil. Throughout his years there, four people slip in and out of his life: Kiyoshi, the Japanese tailor for whom he works; Peixe, the groundskeeper at the town church; and two vagrant children named Santi and Bia. Yohan longs to connect with these people, but to do so he must let go of his traumatic past.
In Snow Hunters, Yoon proves that love can dissolve loneliness, that hope can wash away despair, and that a man who has lost a country can find a new home. This is a heartrending story of second chances, told with unerring elegance and tenderness.
Review
"Yoon's gift as a writer is to reveal the meaning in the smallest moments...A subtle, elegant, poignant read."--
"The collection Once the Shore showcased Yoon's piercing powers of story and language; this novel continues his stunning trajectory with prose so pristine it feels supernatural."--Publishers Weekly
"At first glance Paul Yoon appears to be the perfect miniaturist, but behind every subtle gesture this novel shimmers with a deep and complex history. Snow Hunters is a beautiful and moving meditation on a solitary life."--Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder and Bel Canto
"Paul Yoon's sentences are startlingly beautiful. Lucid and clean and resonant, they build, in Snow Hunters, to form a novel that is deceptively light and extraordinarily tender."--Lauren Groff, author of Arcadia and The Monsters of Templeton
"Snow Hunters reads like a dream. In this quiet, evocative rendering, we espy lives muted by war, altered by loss and displacement, and ultimately mended by the salvaged threads of memories and love. Paul Yoon's writing intimates the emergence of a master stylist, each sentence a jewel to be admired."--Vaddey Ratner, author of In the Shadow of the Banyan
"Paul Yoon offers a profound look at the consequences of war, and what it means to begin a new life in the wake of its devastations...Brief in length, Snow Hunters is truly expansive in its scope, and written in language as clear and bracing as snowmelt."--Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles
"Paul Yoon proves himself well suited to the short form...the pleasures of Snow Hunters are many, and they begin with Yoon's prose, at once lyrical and precise...[the novel] is all the more powerful for its brevity."--Tatjana Soli "New York Times Book Review "
"Paul Yoon's slender novel Snow Hunters is exquisitely written--the kind of book that makes you think, this is the work of a writer's writer."--Roxanne Gay "The Nation "
"A quiet exploration of love and starting over, Yoon's novel is a brilliant story of a young man who leaves his native Korea for Brazil in the aftermath of the Korean War."
--The San Francisco Chronicle
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