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Anna Kim was born on September 10th, 1977 in Daejeon, South Korea.
She studied Philosophy and Theatre Studies at the University of Vienna and wrote her master thesis on G. Lukács´ Theory of the Novel.
She has published several short stories, essays and poems in newspapers, literary magazines and anthologies as well as two novels, Die gefrorene Zeit (Frozen Time, 2008), which is being translated into English and Albanian, Die Bilderspur (The Trace of Pictures, 2004), and a collection of poems, das sinken ein bückflug.
She has received numerous awards and grants.
- Frozen Time
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To be released in Autumn 2010
Translated and with an Afterword by Michael Mitchell
The narrator of Anna Kim´s novel Frozen Time is a relatively inexperienced researcher working for the Red Cross agency that assists people from the former Yugoslavia in their search for lost relatives. As she helps a man from Kosovo whose wife disappeared during the war there, she is confronted with the gruesome results of the work of forensic archaeologists, medics and anthropologists. She is gradually drawn into the fate of her client on a more personal level and eventually accompanies him to Kosovo, where she sees the results of the conflict at first hand. But the documentary aspect is merely the surface of the novel. Beneath it Kim explores, through her narrator, the devastating effect of loss on those left behind, their helplessness as their lives continue in ´frozen time´.
The language of the novel moves from the precise, distancing objectivity of the ´ante-mortem questionnaire´ (´avoid feelings, look for facts´), to a powerful and often poetic language reflecting the narrator´s struggles to come to terms with her increasing personal involvement, to comprehend an experience which is so far beyond that of everyday life. In fact Kim´s language often seems to be asking ´how can this be expressed in words´. This combination of fact and intense feeling makes Frozen Time a moving exploration of loss, of the search for closure.
You agreed to answer the questionnaire, but sometimes your hands tremble, tremble in concert, as do your words, an aftershock in your throat; you stare at the door, as if it were a window with an unforgettable landscape in it, then wake, rummage in your pocket and place your wife´s passport, a slim photograph album and your marriage certificate on the table. The Antemortem Questionnaire: twenty-two sections recording the distinguishing features of a missing person, characteristics that person possessed while still alive, ante mortem, with the aim, through the post mortem analysis and comparison of skeletons, pieces of bone, data, of finding them. What we find is not the person, but their remains, their innermost essence, if you like; on the other hand, what is left, the last remaining scraps, are mere externals and yet they, the bereaved and the researchers, talk of identity, meaning complete identity with, at the same time inner unity of the person. The levels intermingle, seem inseparable, it is unavoidable: the corpse becomes an individual. How long can this thought last? Only as long as the human fragment has not been seen, as long as its death can remain an abstraction, an idea.