Muddy Boots and Broken Hearts: The Stories of Kim Yu-jeong

Korea's most beloved short story writer never wrote about kings or heroes. He wrote about the forgotten ones ? the dirt-poor farmers, the bumbling husbands, the sharp-tongued wives, the swindlers and the swindled ? all stumbling through their hard and often hilarious lives in the muddy countryside of 1930s Korea.

Often compared to O. Henry for his twist endings and to Chekhov for his compassion toward society's most vulnerable, Kim Yu-jeong occupies a place in Korean literature that is entirely his own. To read him is to understand something essential about what it means to be human ? hungry, hopeful, foolish, and irrepressibly alive.

This collection brings together Kim Yu-jeong's finest stories in a new English translation, faithful to the earthiness, the humor, and the heartbreak of the originals.