Author Guide · Korean Literary Fiction
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Bae Suah wrote her first story by chance while practising touch typing on a word processor. She had studied chemistry at Ewha Womans University, had no training in literature and was working as a civil servant when a Korean literary magazine published her story “A Dark Room in 1988” in 1993. Since then she has published more than twenty books in Korean, and since 2001, when she spent eleven months in Germany and began learning German, she has also translated W. G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, Robert Walser and Jenny Erpenbeck into Korean. Six of her books are available in English, five of them translated by Deborah Smith, the translator of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian. This guide covers her 6 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 6 key books · 1998–2013 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Six Bae Suah books are available in English: Nowhere to Be Found (2015; Korean 1998), A Greater Music (2016; 2003), Recitation (2017; 2011), the story collection North Station (2017), Milena, Milena, Ecstatic (2019) and Untold Night and Day (2020; 2013). Start with A Greater Music, a short novel about a Korean writer and her German tutor in Berlin. Read on for how her dreamlike, repeating style works and which book to read next.
Where to Start with Bae Suah
If you want her most accessible novel
→ A Greater Music (2003) — a Korean writer, her German tutor and Berlin in winter.
If you want her best-known book
→ Untold Night and Day (2013) — one night and day in Seoul that starts to repeat.
If you want her early, more realistic writing
→ Nowhere to Be Found (1998) — a young woman in Seoul in 1988.
If you want short fiction
→ North Station (2010) — stories about waiting, memory and separation.
6 Bae Suah Books in English, in Order
Nowhere to Be Found
Published in Korea in 1998 as Cheolsu and in English in 2015 (AmazonCrossing, translated by Sora Kim-Russell), her first book in English. The narrator, a young woman in a dull clerical job in Seoul in 1988, before the Olympics, is indifferent to the political protests around her, alienated from her family and waiting on a boyfriend, Cheolsu, who is never really there. It was longlisted for the 2016 PEN Translation Prize and the 2016 Best Translated Book Award.
A Greater Music
Published in Korea in 2003 as The Essayist’s Desk, written soon after her own eleven months in Germany, and in English in 2016 (Open Letter, translated by Deborah Smith; 128 pages). An unnamed Korean writer returns to Berlin and remembers M, the German tutor she fell in love with, with whom she shared literature and classical music, and her later life with Joachim, a practical metalworker. The memories drift between past and present, and between music, language and regret.
Recitation
Published in Korea in 2011 as The Low Hills of Seoul and in English in 2017 (Deep Vellum, translated by Deborah Smith). Kyung-hee, a theatre actor who specialises in recitation, travels through Europe and Asia, staying with strangers and swapping memories with friends and acquaintances. In the final chapter the narration shifts and becomes unreliable. Library Journal gave it a starred review.
North Station
A story collection published in English in 2017 (Open Letter, translated by Deborah Smith); the title story comes from her 2010 Korean collection The Owl’s Absence. In “North Station” a man and a woman wait on a train platform in an unnamed city while his memories of past relationships surface. Other stories follow a writer visiting her mentor, a young man meeting a former lover, and a playwright trying to put time on stage.
Milena, Milena, Ecstatic
A short book published in English in 2019 by Strangers Press as number six in its Yeoyu series of Korean writing, translated by Deborah Smith; it comes from her 2016 Korean collection Milena, Milena, Magnificent. Hom Yun lives an orderly life of reading and coffee until a foundation agrees to fund his film proposal and its secretary starts following him, which leads to a night of confusion that blends fiction and documentary.
Untold Night and Day
Published in Korea in 2013 and in English in 2020 (Jonathan Cape in the UK, Abrams in the US, translated by Deborah Smith). Ayami, 28, a former actress, works the box office at Seoul’s only audio theatre for the blind on the day it closes. That night she searches the hot city with her former boss for her missing German tutor, Yeoni; the next day she guides a visiting detective novelist, and scenes and people begin to repeat and overlap.
In What Order to Read Bae Suah
None of Bae Suah’s books continue from one another, so you can read them in any order. This page lists them in the order they appeared in English, from Nowhere to Be Found (2015) to Untold Night and Day (2020); the year shown with each book is the year it was first published in Korean. In Korean order they run: Nowhere to Be Found (1998), A Greater Music (2003), North Station’s source collection (2010), Recitation (2011), Untold Night and Day (2013) and Milena, Milena, Ecstatic (2016).
Nowhere to Be Found is the most conventional: a single narrator in a recognisable Seoul. From A Greater Music on, the books loosen: memories, places and characters slide into one another. Untold Night and Day goes furthest, so it makes sense to read it after one of the shorter novels.
A reading path
1. A Greater Music (2003)
2. Nowhere to Be Found (1998)
3. North Station (2010)
4. Recitation (2011)
5. Untold Night and Day (2013)
Other Bae Suah Writing
Beyond the 6 key books: 7 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Shorter work in English
2
2 books · 2013
- 2013Highway with Green Applesthe title story of her 1995 collection, translated by Sora Kim-Russell for Amazon’s Day One
- 2013Time in Graya bilingual Korean–English edition from ASIA Publishers, translated by Chang Chung-hwa and Andrew James Keast
Selected books not yet in English
5
5 books · 1995–2017
- 1995Rhapsody in Blueher first novel
- 2002Zoo-Kinda novel
- 2004Solitary Scholara novel
- 2009North-Facing Living Rooma novel
- 2017Snake and Waterstories
The years · 1965–2020
Quick facts about Bae Suah
- Known for
- Dreamlike, deliberately strange fiction in which memories, places and people repeat and blur, and for translating German literature into Korean.
- 1965
- Born in Seoul
- 1993
- Debut story, “A Dark Room in 1988”
- 2003
- Hankook Ilbo Literary Prize
- 2015
- First book in English, Nowhere to Be Found
- Born
- 1965, Seoul, South Korea
- Education
- Chemistry, Ewha Womans University
- Before writing
- Civil servant; she left the job in 2002
- Lives
- Seoul and Berlin
- Translates
- German literature into Korean, including Sebald, Kafka, Robert Walser, Peter Handke and Jenny Erpenbeck
- English translators
- Deborah Smith (five books) and Sora Kim-Russell
- Korean prizes
- Hankook Ilbo Literary Prize (2003), Dongseo Literary Prize (2004)
The red mark is 2020: Untold Night and Day, her best-known book in English.
How Bae Suah Writes: Feelings Instead of Plot
Bae Suah has said that “feelings are the protagonists of my fiction”, and her books are built that way. There is little plot in the usual sense; instead a narrator moves through memories that return out of order. She has said that non-chronological narrative is a technique all writers use, and that a story is “unlimited, simultaneous and open”. In Untold Night and Day scenes and characters repeat with small changes until it is unclear which version is real.
Her characters are often bookish people who quote European writers, and many of the books are set in Europe or in places that are hardly named. That comes from her own life: she began learning German in the early 2000s, has spent part of most years in Germany since, and translates German literature into Korean, among it Sebald, Kafka, Handke and Jenny Erpenbeck. She has also translated Clarice Lispector and Fernando Pessoa into Korean by way of German versions.
Critics have called her prose alien-sounding and convoluted, and some of her sentences are deliberately ungrammatical. Critics in English often compare her to the films of David Lynch and to Lispector. Her translator Deborah Smith has kept that strangeness in English rather than smoothing it out.
Watch
Bae Suah on A Greater Music
In an interview for South Korean broadcaster KBS, Bae Suah talks about where she lives and writes, her novel Esseiseuteu-ui chaeksang (published in English as A Greater Music), love, music and form; posted in October 2021. In Korean. From the official KBS News channel.
Frequently asked questions about Bae Suah’s books
How many books has Bae Suah written?
More than twenty in Korean since her debut in 1993, including novels, story collections and essays. Six are available in English, all on this page: Nowhere to Be Found, A Greater Music, Recitation, North Station, Milena, Milena, Ecstatic and Untold Night and Day.
What are Bae Suah’s books in order?
In order of English publication: Nowhere to Be Found (English 2015; Korean 1998), A Greater Music (2016; 2003), Recitation (2017; 2011), North Station (2017), Milena, Milena, Ecstatic (2019) and Untold Night and Day (2020; 2013).
Where should I start with Bae Suah?
With A Greater Music. At 128 pages it is short, and its story of a Korean writer, her German tutor M and Berlin in winter shows her style clearly. If you want something more straightforward first, try Nowhere to Be Found; leave Untold Night and Day until you know what to expect.
What is Bae Suah’s most famous book?
In English, Untold Night and Day (Korean 2013; English 2020), her most recent novel in English, published by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Abrams in the US. Her first book in English, Nowhere to Be Found, received the most prize attention: it was longlisted for the 2016 PEN Translation Prize and the Best Translated Book Award.
Who translates Bae Suah into English?
Deborah Smith, who won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 with Han Kang for The Vegetarian, has translated five of the six books on this page. Nowhere to Be Found was translated by Sora Kim-Russell.
What is Untold Night and Day about?
Ayami, a 28-year-old former actress, works at Seoul’s only audio theatre for the blind on its last day. She spends the night searching the city with her former boss for her missing German tutor, Yeoni, and the next day guides a visiting detective novelist. As the book goes on, scenes and people repeat and overlap, and it never fully explains which version is real.
Is Bae Suah also a translator?
Yes. Since the early 2000s she has translated German literature into Korean, including W. G. Sebald, Franz Kafka, Robert Walser, Martin Walser, Peter Handke and Jenny Erpenbeck. She has also translated Clarice Lispector, Fernando Pessoa and Sadegh Hedayat’s The Blind Owl by way of German versions.
Has Bae Suah won any prizes?
In Korea she won the Hankook Ilbo Literary Prize in 2003 and the Dongseo Literary Prize in 2004. In English, Nowhere to Be Found was longlisted for the 2016 PEN Translation Prize and the 2016 Best Translated Book Award.
Is Bae Suah still alive?
Yes. She was born in Seoul in 1965 and lives in Seoul and Berlin. Her most recent book in English is Untold Night and Day (2020).
Footnotes
- Bae Suah — Wikipedia
- Interview: Bae Suah — The White Review, 2017
- An Introduction to Outsider Novelist-Essayist Bae Suah — Los Angeles Review of Books, 2020
- A Greater Music by Bae Suah — World Literature Today, 2016
- Untold Night and Day — Shelf Awareness, 2020
- PEN Translation Prize longlist — Three Percent, 2015
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Feelings are the protagonists of my fiction.”
— Bae Suah, interviewed in The White Review (2017)
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