The Impossible Fairytale
ABOUT
THE BOOK
The Impossible Fairytale tells the story of the nameless ‘Child’, who struggles to make a mark on the world, and her classmate Mia, whose spoiled life is everything the Child’s is not. At school, adults are nearly invisible, and the society the children create on their own is marked by soul-crushing hierarchies and an underlying menace.
Then, one day after hours, the Child sneaks into the classroom to add ominous sentences to her classmates’ notebooks, setting in motion a series of cataclysmic events.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Janet
Hong
Janet Hong is a writer and translator living in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has appeared in Brick: A Literary Journal, Lit Hub, Asia Literary Review, Words Without Borders, Two Lines, and the Korea Times, and she received PEN American Center’s PEN/Heim Translation Fund for her translation of The Impossible Fairytale.
Janet Hong is a writer and translator living in Vancouver, Canada. Her work has appeared in Brick: A Literary Journal, Lit Hub, Asia Literary Review, Words Without Borders, Two Lines, and the Korea Times, and she received PEN American Center’s PEN/Heim Translation Fund for her translation of The Impossible Fairytale.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
The Impossible Fairy Tale is a profoundly thought-provoking debut, with its universally philosophical themes addressing the questions of reason and being. It is breathtakingly accomplished, playing with language and meaning to create a pacey, haunting narrative. Though it is a debut, it written and published after an apprenticeship of three published collections of short stories, which include Ms. Han’s astonishing short story, Black and White Photographer, published in spring 2012 in the Asia Literary Review and which hinted at her promise.