The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories - (Drue Heinz Literature Prize) by Caroline Kim (Paperback)

About the Book

Winner of the 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize

Book Synopsis

Winner, 2020 Drue Heinz Literature Prize Finalist, 2021 Northern California Book Award Longlist, 2021 PEN/Robert Bingham Prize Longlist, 2020 The Story Prize

Exploring what it means to be human through the Korean diaspora, Caroline Kim's stories feature many voices. From a teenage girl in 1980's America, to a boy growing up in the middle of the Korean War, to an immigrant father struggling to be closer to his adult daughter, or to a suburban housewife whose equilibrium depends upon a therapy robot, each character must face their less-than-ideal circumstances and find a way to overcome them without losing themselves. Language often acts as a barrier as characters try, fail, and momentarily succeed in connecting with each other. With humor, insight, and curiosity, Kim's wide-ranging stories explore themes of culture, communication, travel, and family. Ultimately, what unites these characters across time and distance is their longing for human connection and a search for the place--or people--that will feel like home.

Review Quotes

The Prince of Mournful Thoughts is a unique collection. The Korean themes and through-lines are clear, and each story works wonderfully together with the rest to achieve a general commentary on the Korean diaspora. Still, each one of these stories holds its own individual thoughts and ideas about the wider world, and each one works well on its own.-- "Heavy Feather Review"

The Prince of Mournful Thoughts and Other Stories is an extraordinary collection, and the title story alone is an astonishing feat, a fictional imagining of a haunting episode at court in medieval Korea, the problem of a prince who tries to murder his way out of his father's unhappiness with him. The collection takes us in stories across the Korean diaspora, from ancient Korea to the Korean War to Korean Americans living in America in the recent past, the present, and even the future. [Caroline Kim] has a devastating sense of dramatic timing, a keen ear for dialogue, and experiments constantly, with structure, minimalism, science fiction, historical fiction, returning always with insight, intelligence, and an expansive sense of their characters's humanity, which in turn points us to our own. These characters will live in my head a long time. And the prince is etched in my imagination forever.--Alexander Chee

A rarity among first, second, or even tenth collections, Kim maintains enviously superb quality throughout the dozen stories, in which she varies geographies (Korea, California, France), time periods (18th century to the future), and multiple generations.-- "Christian Science Monitor"

An introspective, carefully crafted collection that uses the Korean diaspora as its central focus. . . . Caroline Kim is a gifted writer who surprises with her variety of settings and times.-- "International Examiner"

Caroline Kim's collection is a multifaceted chorus of voices from the Korean diaspora, spanning widely across genres and settings from the ancient world to a future yet to come.-- "Chicago Review of Books"

Caroline Kim's masterful short story collection captures myriad voices with nuance and insight.-- "Foreword Reviews"

During Kim's search for books about Korea, she found few answers. Since then, there's been a burst of English novels and memoirs set in Korea, both written in English originally and translated from the Korean. The connections Kim sought seem to now be coming though, and she's added a selection of her own here.-- "Asian Book Reviews"

Kim finds the real drama in the characters' inner lives, where they struggle with what they feel but can't or don't want to articulate.-- "Michigan Alumnus Magazine"

Kim is a gifted writer of tremendous range--each story conjures a world unto itself.-- "Pittsburgh Quarterly"

Kim's stories . . . ask what is most important in life, with the options ranging from fortune or pride to family, truth, connection, and expressions of love-- "Pulp: Arts Around Ann Arbor"

About the Author

Caroline Kim was born in South Korea. She has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award and an MA in Fiction from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a James A. Michener Fellow. She was nominated by Jellyfish Review for a 2019 Best of the Net award. Kim lives in Walnut Creek, California with her husband and three children.