Djuna: Counterweight with translator Anton Hur
Presented by The Korea Society
Tuesday, November 7, 2023 | 6:30 PM (EST)
The Korea Society
(350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10017)
“An efficient, fast-paced cyberpunk story . . . The novel’s speculations about human agency resonate in the current moment, when American tech C.E.O.s oscillate between issuing sonorous warnings about the existential risks of the A.I. systems they’re developing and breathless hype about brain-computer interfaces. The book imagines the imminent emergence of companies run by artificial intelligence—companies as intelligence, a fusion of technology and economic logic that will definitely outrun humanity.” —Hari Kunzru, The New York Times Book Review
An “antic, madcap noir with flair" (Wired) and “fast-paced cyberpunk story” (The New York Times Book Review) from one of South Korea's most revered science fiction writers, whose identity remains unknown, Djuna's Counterweight is an absorbing tale of corporate intrigue, political unrest, unsolved mysteries, and the havoc wreaked by one company’s monomaniacal endeavor to build the world’s first space elevator.
Originally conceived by Djuna as a low-budget science fiction film, with literary references as wide-ranging as Joseph Conrad and the Marquis de Sade, Counterweight is part cyberpunk, part hard-boiled detective fiction, and part parable of South Korea’s neocolonial ambition and its rippling effects.
Djuna is a novelist and film critic, and a former chair of the Korean Science Fiction Writers Union. For more than twenty years they have published as a faceless writer, refusing to reveal personal details regarding age, gender, or legal name. Widely considered to be one of South Korea’s most important science fiction writers, Djuna has published ten short-story collections and five novels.
Anton Hur, the award-winning translator of many Korean literature including Djuna's first English translation, discusses Djuna's writings and their impact in Korea, the genre of Korean science fiction, and literary translation from Korean to English in this conversation with Matthew Sciarappa.
During the event, Counterweight will be available for sale.