<p>Yi Chung-jun's haunting and disturbing novel Seopyeonje is set in the 1950s after the Korean War in the remote south of the country, home of the traditional art of pansori singing, a moving and plangently beautiful style of folk song performed by travelling musicians. The linked stories centre on a family of itinerant singers: a boy and his stepfather and half-sister. The boy believes the stepfather caused his mother's death and cannot live wi...