By Chung Ah-young
When South African author Melanie Steyn first came to Korea in 2002, it was summer. Everything was shining and green. She encountered the peninsula in the southern tip of the land and found picturesque villages with hipped and gabled roofs and temples on a curved dirt road lined with trees.
Steyn, who teaches in the department of English education at Suncheon National University in South Jeolla Province, weaves all these things into her novel “Once Around The Sun” (Seoul Selection; 141 pp., $7.95 or 5,500 won).
Set in a fishing village in the area, the novel revolves around Lee Chang-joon, a fictional family man, and more concretely focuses on other members of Lee’s family in each chapter.
Consisting of four chapters ― summer (son), fall (daughter), winter (mother) and spring (grandmother), the book intriguingly associates a family member to each season.