Bright Night

Name: Bright Night
ISBN: 9787516835265

崔恩荣 / 叶蕾Taihai Publishing House · ChinaJul 2023

4.4

Word count: 134K words
Chapters: 24
ISBN: 9787516835265

Report an error Find this book

Summary

After divorcing my husband, I came alone at thirty-one to the small seaside town of Hui-ryeong, where I ran into my grandmother, whom I had not seen in years. After the awkwardness and silence, our lonely hearts drew closer bit by bit, and she and I became friends who confided in each other. In an old photo album at her house, I found a woman who looked remarkably like me, nestled beside my grandmother as a girl.

One vivid face after another gradually emerged from the black-and-white photographs, from the deeply moving letters, from distant memories, passing through an age when women's lives were as rootless as duckweed and their fates as worthless as grass, and came to stand before me.

Through my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother, the story arrived at my side, and their lives replayed before my eyes.

Can I, now, reach them?

Just as countless past selves make up who I am now, can my present self meet the countless selves of the past?

Editor's review

Bright Night is a major novel by Choi Eun-young, one of the leading Korean writers born in the 1980s, and the first of her works to be published in Chinese. Spanning the lives of four generations of Korean women, the novel weaves a moving portrait of female friendship, trauma, and healing. It begins in 2014, when thirty-one-year-old Jiyun, after the breakdown of her marriage, returns to her hometown of Huiling and unexpectedly reunites with her grandmother, whom she has not seen for years. This encounter becomes a key that opens a long-sealed storehouse of family memory, bringing forth the experiences of her great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother in their respective eras—from the upheavals of the Japanese colonial period to the separation of families during the Korean War, and on to the family and social constraints that persisted even through the years of rapid economic growth. Choi Eun-young's prose is delicate, restrained, and full of warmth. Rather than dramatizing grand historical tragedy, she immerses the sweeping currents of fate in the folds of women's daily lives: repeated partings, silent support, and unspoken understanding form the most resilient bonds between them. What moves readers most is the novel's portrayal of how women, under a male-dominated grand narrative, build their own history and lineage by watching over and sustaining one another, ultimately arriving at a "bright night" that transcends era and pain. It shows that recovering individual memory and family story is a precious force against forgetting, a source of consolation, and a means of self-rebuilding. This is not merely a novel about women, but a healing work about piecing together a complete self from the fragments of history and memory.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in an epic of East Asian women's lives and emotions rendered with delicate detail
Those seeking solace while exploring family history or personal roots
Readers who love the warm everyday texture of Reply 1988 and the female bonds of Little Women
Readers hoping to find emotional resonance and inner healing through literature

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting fast-paced, plot-driven fiction with strong conflict
Readers impatient with a narrative focused on women's perspectives and daily life

Reading tips

Follow Jiyun's perspective and immerse yourself in the details of four generations' lives, experiencing how emotions gather drop by drop into a river.
Read the novel alongside Choi Eun-young's story collection Shoko's Smile to better understand her consistently gentle yet resilient style.
The book abounds in descriptions of food, smells, and old objects that serve as anchors of memory; slow down and savor the emotional weight these details carry.

About the publisher

Taihai Publishing House China · Founded in 1997

Founded in 1997 and based in Beijing, Taihai Publishing House takes “building cultural bridges and promoting cross-strait unity” as its mission, focusing on Taiwan-related studies, social sciences and humanities, Chinese and foreign history, and literature. Judging from the 709 titles in the database, its publishing centers on foreign literature and classic works, with attention to Eastern philosophy, architecture, and social culture. Representative books include Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha and Steppenwolf and the four-volume Hesse literary series, Liang Sicheng’s A History of Chinese Architecture, Lao She’s Teahouse (unabridged classic edition), Sun Wu’s The Art of War, and collections by W. Somerset Maugham, Yasunari Kawabata, and Yukio Mishima. Its authors include major foreign writers such as Hesse, Maugham, Kawabata, and Mishima, as well as Liang Sicheng, Lao She, and Sun Wu. Its publishing features complete presentation of classic texts and series-based organization of foreign literature; public information on its Taiwan-related studies titles and authors is limited.

版权信息
第一部
1
2
3
4
第二部
5
6
7
第三部
8
9
10
11
第四部
12
13
第五部
14
15
16
作家的话
因为有光，所以可能——《明亮的夜晚》译后记

FAQ

What era does this book cover?

The novel spans from the Japanese colonial period of the 1930s through the Korean War to the present (2014), reflecting nearly a century of turbulence and change in Korean society through the experiences of four generations of women in one family.

Is the book's tone sad?

The book addresses heavy subjects such as war, separation, and gender inequality, but the author writes with great restraint and warmth, focusing on the resilience, mutual support, and hope women find in hardship. The overall tone is warm, healing, and full of strength, and the ending is bright and hopeful.

What is Choi Eun-young's standing in Korean literature?

Choi Eun-young is one of the most representative Korean writers born in the 1980s and has won several major Korean literary awards, including the Heo Gyun Literary Award and the Kim Yujeong Literary Award. She is known for her nuanced, profound portrayals of ordinary people, especially women, and has a wide readership; she has been called "a literary guide for a new generation."

Comments

Find this book

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

崔恩荣 Author

Choi Eun-young is a South Korean novelist. Domestic library sources offer limited information about her life, and publicly available material is scarce; five of her works are currently held in the collection. Her writing is known for its delicate, restrained style, drawing out the subtle emotional tensions between characters through everyday details, with particular attention to friendship and mutual support among women. Representative works such as Bright Night, Even with the Faintest Light, The Harmless One, and Even Without Effort center on ordinary people's loneliness, exhaustion, and tenderness, revealing an attentiveness to vulnerable situations through plain language. Chinese readers generally place her work in the categories of foreign literature and classic works, and the collected edition on women's friendship further highlights this thread in her writing.

叶蕾 Author

Ye Lei is a Chinese-language book author about whom limited public information is available; her nationality, dates of birth and death, and English name are not specified. Two works by her are included in the collection: Bright Night and The Collected Classic Works of Choi Eun-young: A Collector's Edition on Female Friendship (three volumes). Her works are commonly classified under foreign literature. Judging from the available titles, Ye Lei's writing is closely connected with Korean women's literature and the theme of female friendship, involving the presentation of women's experiences and emotional bonds, and is aimed at readers interested in foreign literature and women's narratives. Because public information is limited, her personal background, education, and the full scope of her writing cannot be confirmed at present; readers may refer to the two works above to understand her editorial and writing direction.