Once Around the Sun

Melanie Steyn, a South African living and working in South Korea for eight years, kindly sent me a copy of her beautiful short novel Once Around the Sun, recently published by Seoul Selection. I love the cover artwork by Eunji Shin, a drawing in muted colours of a mish-mash of ordinary buildings (laundry, internet cafe) in an ordinary town with hills in the background. 

The prologue first invites us elegantly to the 5,000-year-old country of Korea, 'sometimes invaded, occupied or oppressed, but always surviving between the oceans and thousands of flint-shaped mountains'. It introduces the four stories, set in four seasons in a southern fishing village with a dirt road lined with chestnut, Korean pines and persimmons leading to a temple. 

The first story (all I've read so far) concerns two young boys and the style is so simple and reminiscent of Famous Five adventures you are tempted to call the chapter 'the case of the missing casket'. But behind the good yarn that you could happily read to your children is, the jacket blurb explains, a deeper message of enlightenment and spiritual awakening.

Dedicated to Melanie's son 'and to what turned out to be more than one year in Korea', this very special novel which also exudes the author's love of her adopted country would be a lovely gift for a reader of any age.