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Title details for The Hive and the Honey by Paul Yoon - Available

The Hive and the Honey

by Paul Yoon
Raymond J. Lee
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
1 of 1 copy available
Winner of The Story Prize
Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
A Time Top 10 Best Fiction Book of 2023 and Must Read Book of 2023
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Library Journal, Electric Literature, and the New York Public Library

"Expansive, haunting, and intimate, Paul Yoon's new short story collection The Hive and the Honey...shows Yoon at the height of his powers." —Sabir Sultan, Pen America

From the beloved award-winning author Paul Yoon comes a spectacular collection of unique stories, each confronting themes of identity, belonging, and the collision of cultures across countries and centuries.
A boy searches for his father, a prison guard, on Sakhalin Island. In Barcelona, a woman is tasked with spying on a prizefighter who may or may not be her estranged son. A samurai escorts an orphan to his countrymen in the Edo Period. A formerly incarcerated man starts a new life in a small town in upstate New York and attempts to build a family.

The Hive and the Honey is a "virtuosic" (Vanity Fair) collection by celebrated author Paul Yoon, one that portrays the vastness and complexity of diasporic communities, with each story bringing to light the knotty inheritances of their characters. How does a North Korean defector connect with the child she once left behind? What are the traumas that haunt a Korean settlement in Far East Russia?

"Absorbing...Yoon details fully realized and flawed characters attempting to wade through the complexities of immigrant life...[and] asks urgent questions about what it really means to belong somewhere." —Time, 100 Must-Read Books of 2023

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    October 10, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781797162300
      • File size: 132013 KB
      • Duration: 04:35:01

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      August 7, 2023
      Yoon (Run Me to the Earth) delivers a lean collection of stories featuring restless, complex characters driven by their need for connection and forgiveness. Throughout, themes of displacement and loss are juxtaposed with simple moments of love and understanding. In “Bosun,” an ex-con wrestles with how to relate to others, considering all that he’s already lost. “Komarov” finds Lee Jooyun, who fled North Korea and eventually wound up in Barcelona, agreeing to wear a wire to gain information on a Russian boxer for her birth country, in exchange for learning about the family she left behind. In the title story, 22-year-old Andrei Bulavin composes a letter to his uncle back in Russia, recounting a disturbing supernatural event at the Korean settlement he’s been sent to police. Yoon carefully mingles the extraordinary with the everyday, evoking the natural world with simple yet striking language: “We come upon a tree that has flowered early. It stands alone amid the endless row of cedars that line the road, its bright red color so sudden and distracting—like the appearance of a door among the evergreens.” This is an elegant exploration of life’s brutal and beautiful moments.

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from June 10, 2024

      Young Lions Award winner Yoon's third short story collection (following 2017's The Mountain), narrated by Raymond J. Lee, transports listeners into a breathtaking tapestry of worlds, exploring the complicated communities of the Korean diaspora. The seven stories feature characters with rich inner lives, engaging with longing, loss, and hope as they search for belonging. "At the Post Station" features a Japanese samurai who travels with a boy soon to return to Korea, and in "Bosun," a formerly incarcerated man settles in a small Upstate New York town in the mountains. Other stories feature Korean shop owners in London who work far too hard and a maid in Spain who agrees to spy on a Russian prizefighter who could be her son. Lee honors Yoon's simple but beautifully crafted language, providing a soulful narration that taps into the melancholic and meditative atmosphere. VERDICT This haunting collection, featuring complex individuals caught between cultures, is a gem, recommended for any collection of audio short stories. A good pick for those who enjoyed Te-Ping Chen's Land of Big Numbers and Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry's What Isn't Remembered.--Scott DiMarco

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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