One Thousand Chestnut Trees

(Paperback)

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An epic tale of an enigmatic land Korea and one womans search for her past.
Uncle Hong-do arrives in Vermont from Korea to see the sister he has never met, a concert violinist long settled in America. His colourful visit turns his teenage niece Annas world upside down, disrupting her cosy existence with his eccentric customs, forcing into it a fresh and intriguing tang of Korea. Then, too soon, he returns to Seoul.

When Anna leaves for the orient many years later to uncover her familys elusive history, her departure stirs up vivid, shocking memories for her mother, of her gilded childhood in Korea and the story of her noble clans fall from power.

Long ago, her grandfather, Lord Min, commanded his own private armies and his vast estates straddled North and South. In defiance of centuries of barbarous invasions by the Japanese, Manchus, and finally the Communists he built a temple high in the mountains, and planted one thousand chestnut trees to shield it from view. Now, generations later, his trees call back his great-granddaughter, and Anna sets out with Uncle Hong-do to find the hidden temple.

A powerful mixture of memoir and fiction the Wild Swans of Korea.

Reviews

'A startlingly impressive debut. This marvellous - and very moving - book tells its Korean story stylishly and with great skill.' William Trevor 'A warm and warming evocation of landscape and memory. Stout's lively sense of language and culture shows her to be a writer of great promise.' Daily Telegraph

Author Bio

Mira Stout is a freelance journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Spectator and Independent. A Korean-American, she now lives in London.