Han Kang - the Vegetarian

Saw it being shilled in the NYT, so I knew it was to be avoided. Same with The Nix, which many people on here also wondered about, and discovered to be bad. These publications only pander to pseuds and plebs, despite any pretension they have. If you're interested in a recent book, and you see that it's been reviewed favorably by places such as the NYT, New Yorker, Huff Post, Guardian, etc., avoid it.

How should you go about finding good contemporary lit?

There isn't much. Delillo, Pynchon, Ishiguro, and McCarthy are all still writing. They're pretty safe bets, though I read The Buried Giant after it was praised in the NYT, and what a surprise, I hated it compared to his other books I read.

But there are so many good books that were written in the past, I doubt you've read them all.

I see what you're saying but also feel like it's nothing new and not really restricted to 2015/16

Fan death isn't a thing any more

YeH, it's based in Confucianism so there's lots of emphasis on deference to your elders/betters, which pretty much means older men.

I haven't read this but have read Human Acts.i also found the prose sparse and a little disjointed - like Hememeingway on steroids, but that was possibly because it was a translation (tfw he can't read Korean fluently...). Lie you say the overtly political nature of the novel is very interesting, but there were times when it was so sparse it was almost hard to follow especially because, ashamedly, my western mind struggles with remembering the Korean names far more than it would western ones...

That said, deposits all her flaws, I still think Han Kang is well above Murakami.

Not being new or restricted to those years doesn't change how godawful it is or how those were especially dire years because of it.

>Han Kang(z)

WE

I imagine it's mostly ignorant cultural practices (unchanged by modern science or civility). People who force children to defer to their ignorant, unlearned, useless old people are obviously not worth listening to.

NYRB and international awards longlists (NOT winners) as well as reviews in stuff other than NYT like the NYRB, Jacobin, New Criterion, American Conservative, London Review, Laphams.

Buried Giant was a great book, and your dismissal of contemporary literature with a flick of the wrist just shows your lack of breadth in reading it.

"I would maintain, on the contrary, that every epoch is immediate to God, and that its value in no way depends on what may have eventuated from it, but rather in its existence alone, its own unique particularity"

Leopold von Ranke in regards to Sir Walter Scott's works to the King of Bavaria ironic since Veeky Forums shits on him now

What was good about Buried Giant? I had read The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go, and I thought both of those were amazing, especially compared to Buried Giant. Maybe because I'm not that familiar with English history or Arthurian legend, but there wasn't really a clear idea behind the story that had any relevance to me. It all seemed to be magic and fantasy with no relationship to reality, and a conflict that in the end was just boring instead of heartrending and insightful like the other books I read.