[Short Fiction Series 1]
The three stories gathered in this volume display Yi Sang¡¯s inventive manipulation of autobiographical elements, a method which expands his intensely private narratives into broader meditations on love, life, and death. ¡°The Wings,¡± a dark allegory of infidelity and self-deception, probes the ambiguities of perception and language through an unreliable narrator who bears an uncanny resemblance to the author himself. ¡°Encounters and Departures,¡± a tale of ill-fated love revolving around erotic passion and physical illness as metaphors presents a female protagonist modelled on the woman who was, in real life, the author¡¯s muse and femme fatale. Similarly, in ¡°Deathly Child,¡± Yi Sang offers a witty, incisive examination of sexual mores through a fictional reenactment of his ambivalent feelings toward the woman he married toward the end of his life.