What's behind the success of a prestigious Seoul architecture firm?

The brand new Gata Maula publishing house has just published his third book, At dusk, by Hwang Sok-yong (Changchun, 1943), a polysemic title that refers both to the twilight of life and to the opportune moment to put out fires, or also to the state of traffic between day and night.

The protagonist and cultivator of this story is Park Min-woo, a sixty-something man of poor origin who now heads a prestigious architectural firm in Seoul. Min-woo feels satisfied both with his personal triumph and with having contributed to the modernization and progress of the country. One day, after giving a lecture—the novel begins in half nothing, just as the lecture is finishing—a young woman approaches him against the flow of the crowd leaving the room, hands him a note with a name (Cha Sun-ah) and a phone number, and then disappears. She works nights in a supermarket, eats expired food, and loses hair due to lack of sleep. She also narrates some chapters, alternating her voice with that of the architect.

At this point, the author reflects on the various social classes: on the one hand, the Korean slums where the protagonist grew up, the one-room apartments, the exorbitantly priced basement flats; on the other, the full and comfortable lives of architects and politicians. Amidst the harsh realities, the film confronts high society head-on. "Is there really any crumb of humanity in architecture?" and ends up answering himself, dejected, at the end of his life, that "in the end, [buildings are made] only of money and power." In the midst of these questions, At dusk It includes political and social aspects of South Korea, as well as the transformations the country has undergone over time.

The novel, it must be said, has the slow narrative rhythm characteristic of much Eastern literature. Sok-yong lingers on all kinds of details, but also on all kinds of changes that the protagonist observes in the landscape of his childhood when, a few days after the conference, he returns to see his friend Byeong-gu, who is now in a coma in the hospital: "The landscape transforms as quickly as if you were looking at it from the end." In parallel, At dusk explores themes such as loneliness, memory, and human relationships, and does so through Sok-yong's introspective style, which constantly links together reflections on life and art.

The narrative focuses on the protagonist's experiences as he revisits his past and the decisions he has made, emphasizing the ties he has met and lost. The melancholic and poetic tone of Sok-yong's prose creates a rich, evocative (and opiate-like) atmosphere that reflects the beauty and fragility of life and the absurdity of classism. Hwang Sok-yong has always been deeply sensitive to the social and political problems of his country, which has led him to imprisonment and exile.