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    The Court Dancer: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Court Dancer: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Court Dancer: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Court Dancer: A Novel

    Written by Kyung-Sook Shin

    Narrated by Rosa Escoda

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    When a novice French diplomat arrives in Korea for an audience with the Emperor, he is enraptured by the Joseon Dynasty's magnificent culture. But all fades away when he sees Yi Jin perform the delicate traditional Dance of the Spring Oriole. Although well aware that women of the court belong to the palace, the young diplomat confesses his love to the Emperor and gains permission for Yi Jin to accompany him back to France.

    A world away in Belle Epoque Paris, Yi Jin lives a free, independent life away from the gilded cage of the court and begins translating and publishing Joseon literature into French with another Korean student. But even in this new world, great sorrow awaits her, and Yi Jin's grieving and suffering is only amplified by homesickness. But her homecoming ends up being an unhappy one. Betrayal, jealousy, and intrigue abound, culminating with the tragic assassination of the last Joseon empress....

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateAug 7, 2018
    ISBN9781974917631
    Unavailable
    The Court Dancer: A Novel
    Author

    Kyung-Sook Shin

    Kyung-Sook Shin is one of South Korea's most widely read and acclaimed novelists. She is the author of The Girl Who Wrote Loneliness, I'll Be Right There, and Please Look After Mom, which was a New York Times bestseller and a Man Asian Literary Prize winner.

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    Reviews for The Court Dancer

    3.5/5

    33 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A sense of sadness is predominant in this novel, which follows the story of an orphaned girl who becomes a court dancer at the Korean imperial court. She is favored by the queen, a powerful woman in her own right, and falls under the eye of a visiting French diplomat. The diplomat falls in love and begs to marry Yi Jin. She finally agrees, they sail to France together, where she discovers the liberties of Paris and the racism of nineteenth-century Europe, but marriage fails to materialize. Struggling with her own identity, Yi Jin returns to Korea, determined to change her country for the better, but a growing tragedy awaits. This novel makes for good reading, if one can bare the sorrow and tragedy it contains.
    • 4/5
      The story of the Joseon Dynasty is unfamiliar to me. So the ending came as a surprise to me. I really enjoyed this story. The beautiful descriptions of the Korean court. We see Yi Jin's view of life in Paris. The grace and poetry of the traditional ways as well as the downside.
    • 3/5
      Set in the early 1900s and loosely based on a true story, The Court Dancer is about a young and beautiful orphan named Yi Jin, who becomes a favorite of the Korean Empress and is trained as a court dancer. When a French diplomat sees her dance, he declares himself in love and is allowed to take her back with him to France where she spends some years translating Korean literature and experiencing life in the Belle Epoque era.The book's focus is on Yi Jin but it also paints a vivid picture of her surroundings both in Korea and in France. Suffering from both depression and homesickness, she is eventually returned to Korea but she has changed so much during her time away that she is once again caught between cultures and with Japan’s annexation of Korea, her country is vastly changed as well.While the setting of the Korean Imperial Court was fascinating and the story held a great deal of interest for me, there was something lacking in the writing. It may have been the translation but I felt detached from the story and found it unable to stir my emotions. Even though this book had so many of the ingredients I look for in historical fiction it failed to totally draw me in, but I would say if you have a particular interest in Korea or this time period, it may well be worth picking up this book as I note that many people do seem to like it.
    • 4/5
      Intriguing historical romance, light on the romance and more steadfastly faithful to the palace intrigue. The reader does feel captured in an intimate world of royal domestic goings on. The characters stand distinguished and well drawn from all walks of late 19th C. Korean urban life, but with an emphasis on two who have artistic talent, the dancer heroine and the musician unrequited lover.Aspects of the novel that kept me reading were the depiction of the cultural destruction and reconstitution illustrated by the heroine's and mute musician's beginnings in a Catholic orphanage; the incursions by western powers, primarily French, less German, for the purpose of economic exploitation; the ineffective rule of the Korean emperor in resisting Chinese and Japanese political machinations and warfare within his country's borders; and the drama these factors had on the actions of the main characters.The novel, taken from the most general view is a classic example of Kipling's remark that East and West, never the twain shall meet, as intimately illustrated by the heroine's long love affair with a French consular official that took her from Korea to France. And one is reminded of Thomas Wolfe's admonition that you can't go home again at the end of the novel.Atmosphere is the book's strong point; operatic melodrama is its end point. In spite of this lukewarm review, I believe Yi Jin's story is above average for the abundant lessons in Korean history delivered so artfully by Kyung-Sook Shin as to be painless and fascinating. The writing is as brilliant as the Court Dancer's performances. And the inevitability of the denouement is emotionally affecting. There is power enough in the novel to stay with the reader for a long time.