An Interview with Kyung-Ran Jo and Chi-Young Kim, Author and Translator of "Blowfish"

Tony Huang: Blowfish seems to explore themes of isolation, artistic expression, and the weight of family history. Could you elaborate on which of these themes was the initial seed for the novel and how it evolved during the writing process?

Kyung-Ran Jo: I’m happy that’s how you read it. I prefer thinking about the “meaning” of something rather than the “theme.” As I was working on Blowfish, the “meaning” I was interested in, as in the emotion that would remain with the reader, was the idea expressed by the sentence “I need to live longer,” or perhaps the sentence “I should try to live longer.” Because you really don’t know what is going to unfold in your life. I think the friendship-like love between the two characters grew and expanded in the process of writing the novel.

Tony Huang: The novel introduces us to several intense and visually striking artistic creations, like Sew Me or Breath of Being. How does the act of creating art function as a form of communication or coping mechanism for your characters in Blowfish?

Blowfish, by Kyung-Ran Jo (Astra House, July 15, 2025)

Kyung-Ran Jo: Through these very visual artworks, I wanted to very clearly show the reader the meaning of this novel—that what we all need to do at this very moment, on this very day, is basically “Breath of Being.” I was also interested in exploring how everyone has a desire to tell their own stories, how everyone proves their existence and their aliveness through their own individual acts of creating art.

Tony Huang: Food, particularly the blowfish itself, seems to hold a symbolic weight in the novel. Can you discuss the significance of food as a motif and why you chose the blowfish as the central image?

Kyung-Ran Jo: The act of taking a “breath” is included in the abstract idea of “life.” As we all know, breathing means you are alive; if you do not breathe, you are close to death. I consider blowfish as something that contains both life and death. It’s a fish that is a delicacy, but also contains poison that makes it very dangerous.

This symbolism isn’t something I made up for the novel.

It’s a little difficult to talk about, but it’s a motif borrowed from my own grandmother’s life, though just this one specific part: she ended her difficult life on the morning of her birthday by eating poisonous blowfish soup she had made herself. After I became a writer, my family’s painful secret became more significant to me when I realized that what my grandmother had really wanted was her own identity.

Tony Huang: The narrative shifts perspectives throughout the novel. What drew you to explore these moments of solitude and how do you see these characters connecting (or failing to connect) with each other?

Kyung-Ran Jo: Until I put pen to paper, what I most agonized over was whose point of view I would employ to write this story. Would it be that of a woman who wants to end her own life, or that of the man who wants to pull that woman toward life? Which point of view would most effectively reveal their stories? I mulled over it for a long time before choosing this “focused” approach. The effect of this approach is that only the reader knows each character’s circumstances and stories, while the other character is kept in the dark. I thought that would create a greater emotional resonance for the reader.

The characters’ expectations and love for life are the source of their connection. Even though the characters themselves don’t know that, I wanted the reader to recognize that desire in both characters and feel sympathetic, as well as hope that everything would turn out well for them. In essence, I hoped the reader would get emotionally involved in the story.

Tony Huang: Family trauma, especially the grandmother’s suicide by blowfish and its impact on subsequent generations, appears to be a powerful undercurrent. How does the past continue to shape the present lives and decisions of your characters?

Kyung-Ran Jo: It was an important premise for her granddaughter to be an artist, someone who was creating something with her own hands. That way, she could make a choice distinct from her grandmother’s. Her grandmother lived through a difficult era for a woman to find her own self, her identity. Even if she had that awareness, it couldn’t have been easy to live the life she wanted in those circumstances. Ultimately that granddaughter, the sculptor, creates artwork. In that process she has experienced how alive she is, and resolves to live a little longer. If the past hadn’t existed, it would have been impossible for it to affect the present.

Tony Huang: Tokyo serves as a significant setting in the novel. What was the intention behind placing a portion of the narrative in this specific location, and how does the atmosphere of Tokyo contrast with the settings in South Korea?

Kyung-Ran Jo: Tokyo is the second “location” in this novel. Tokyo is a city that is near but far from Korea. At least once a year, I usually spend a good amount of time in Tokyo. I’ve been spending time there for a long while now, so I do know a little about that city. I was born in Seoul and still live here. Out of all the cities in the world, Seoul and Tokyo are the ones I know best, feel at home in, and have lived in for long stretches. The two cities have many characteristics, both similar and different, but there is one thing that is true of both places. That wherever it may be, there are always people who are thinking about death, and what they need most is someone who would hold their hand, someone who is close to them. Perhaps that is the key characteristic of a city, of any city.

Tony Huang: The novel hints at a complex relationship between the two central figures. Can you describe the nature of their connection and what draws them together despite their apparent isolation?

Kyung-Ran Jo: The man’s central wound is that he wasn’t able to save his brother. He encounters a woman who displays a similar inclination to his brother, a woman who very obviously wants to die, and he wants to do what he wasn’t able to for his brother. It’s a fact that people who are isolated, people who are lonely, people who are consumed with death tend to recognize each other. That is how the two characters recognize each other, and they step into each other’s worlds. At the conclusion of the novel, I wanted that act to be seen as hopeful as the artworks, as a story about people who dream of the future. Depending on the reader, it could be read as a kind of friendship, as a bond between people deeply wounded by their families, or as love.

I personally hope the last sentence would be seen as the start of their love story, one the characters finally recognize as such.

Tony Huang: Having translated Kyung-Ran Jo’s work before (Tongue), what unique challenges or rewarding aspects did you encounter in translating Blowfish, particularly in capturing its nuanced emotional weight and often understated prose?

Chi-Young Kim: I love being immersed in the atmospheric, emotionally sensitive worlds Kyung-Ran creates, so I was thrilled to translate Blowfish. When I worked on Tongue, I was young and newer to the art of translation, and I don’t think I would have been ready to translate Blowfish. So much of Kyung-Ran’s work delves into what it means to seek beauty and artistic and professional fulfillment in the face of loss and disappointment, and as a more seasoned translator (and human), I more viscerally understood what the characters are searching for, and how their lived experiences and their art meld together. I hope I did her work justice.

Tony Huang: The novel features vivid descriptions of art and specific cultural contexts (like the blowfish preparation). How did you approach translating these elements to ensure they resonate with an English-speaking audience while maintaining their cultural integrity?

Chi-Young Kim: Luckily I have a personal interest in art and food, so I am familiar with the language used to describe those elements. One challenging aspect was translating the names of different types of blowfish. In the original, the blowfish names are in Korean, but we decided to use the Japanese names as the woman in the novel is studying a Japanese text. I was able to find the Japanese names of only some of the blowfish, so Kyung-Ran helped me track down the others. Before she swooped in to save the day, I spent hours looking up information about blowfish and got to learn more about these fascinating, beautiful creatures.

Tony Huang: The novel showcases a stark and often unsettling atmosphere. How did you work to convey this mood and tone through your translation strategies?

Chi-Young Kim: I approached this novel the way I do all translations, by attempting to capture the author’s voice and tone in English. I translate with one goal in mind: when I read the book in English, I want to feel the same emotions I do when reading it in Korean. Kyung-Ran’s language is sensual and perceptive, and I just followed the roadmap she’d laid out in the novel.

Tony Huang: Given the marketing emphasis on feminist narratives, how do you see the themes and characters in Blowfish engaging with or contributing to contemporary feminist discourse in translation?

Chi-Young Kim: Does telling the story of a female artist make it a feminist narrative? As a staunch feminist myself, I question our society’s impulse to simply categorize any story centering a woman’s inner thoughts and life as feminist. I found this novel to be an especially profound meditation on an artist’s struggle to make art and seek beauty in the face of failure (and death), and on the power of human connection. Anyone who has a creative life, anyone who has lived through a loss, anyone who has seen or felt seen by someone else will recognize the emotional truths explored in Blowfish. 

Tony Huang: The dialogue and internal thoughts often feel fragmented and introspective. What strategies did you employ to capture this interiority and the subtle shifts in consciousness in English?

Chi-Young Kim: As a translator, I spend hours and months burrowed inside the narrative and the characters’ minds. To capture the nuances of language used in the original, you have to live in that world for a sustained length of time. My approach to translation is more intuitive than intellectual; the cadence of the language in the original determines how I write in English, and being steeped in a world of the author’s creation helps me interpret it into my own words and into another language and context.

Kyung-Ran Jo made her literary debut in 1996 when her short story “The French Optical” won the Dong-a Ilbo New Writer’s Contest. She is the author of five story collections and three novels. Her novel Tongue was published in English by Bloomsbury in 2009. She is also the recipient of the Hyundae Munhak Award and the Dongin Prize, among others.

Chi-Young Kim is an award-winning literary translator and editor based in Los Angeles. A recipient of the Man Asian Literary Prize (2011), she has translated works by Gu Byeong-mo, Ae-ran Kim, Cheon Myeong-kwan, Kyung-ran Jo, and Kyung-sook Shin, among others.

Tony Huang, PhD, is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Hong Kong Review. He is also the founder of Metacircle Fellowship, Metacircle (Hong Kong) Culture and Education Co., Ltd. and Metaeducation. He works as a guest-editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. His poems and translations have appeared in Mad Swirl, The Hong Kong Review, The Best Small Fictions Anthology Selections 2020, Tianjin Daily, Binhai Times, SmokeLong Quarterly, Nankai Journal, Large Ocean Poetry Quarterly, Yangcheng Evening News and other places.

Copy editor: Nancy He