Service95 Recommends is the home of the books we love and reviews from our contributors. Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha tells the story of seven Korean Women, reimagining the nine Greek muses as figures of resilience and memory amid colonisation, exile, and cultural survival.
What Ocean Says: “This book is one of the most radical approaches to the novel that I’ve read, one where time-honored narrative decrees for cohesion, fluidity, character development, plot and arc are refused in order to privilege a necessary, orchestrated sense of disorientation as a method of enacting displacement, trauma, and national and private grief… Because Cha was also a visual artist, the book can be read as an exhibit, both in the curatorial sense (images and calligraphy often interrupt the text) as well as a judicial one – where documents and family albums are scanned as evidence of erased histories.”
What They Say: “With the original cover and high-quality interior layout as Cha had designed them, this [restored edition] is the most aesthetically appealing edition of the five that have been produced” – Asian Review of Books
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Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American writer, professor, photographer, and author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
