The four linked stories - "Jaehee," "A Bite of Rockfish, Taste the Universe," "Love in the Big City," and "Late Rainy Season Vacation" - illustrate how the queer community has, since the early 2000s, lived under a dual system of being " privately out of and publicly in the closet," as South Korean society has not fully recognized LGBTQ rights. Originally titled “A Manual for Love in the Big City,” Park's novel can be read as an anthropological approach to Seoulite queer lives in the 21st century. Translated by Anton Hur with startling immediacy, Park's English language debut - as framed by this unforgettable scene - captures the ambiguous landscape inhabited by South Korean gays, of being both visible and unacknowledged. In "Late Rainy Season Vacation," a story in Sang Young Park's “Love in the Big City,” a gay character decides to lie down in the middle of a rain-soaked street with his lover, luxuriating in the sensation of being at once exposed and protected by the inclement weather.
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