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Kept: A Comedy of Sex and Manners - Y. Euny Hong's debut novel
KEPT: A COMEDY OF SEX AND MANNERS was conjured up by Y. Euny Hong in 2003 when she found herself "broke, unemployed, and alone in Berlin, unfairly blaming my problems on my family, for raising me to think of myself as a Korean aristocrat in a world where things ceased to matter." Compared to William Makepeace Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," KEPT explores sex, race and class in Manhattan, where impoverished aristocratic women (like the main character Jude Lee) become courtesans (fancy word for "escort") to pay off their debts...in the 21st century.
Before your nose tingles from the woeful hint of Asian women exoticism, KEPT is meant to be a satirical, biting tale that exposes sexuality, class and family ties by showing the absurdity of it all.
Jude Lee, the Yale-educated daughter of Korean royalty ("I can trace my Korean ancestry back 28 generations on my father's side and 26 on my mother's side, both lines having commenced with Chinese royalty who chose to marry and settle in Korea.") is vain, indulged and full of herself (hmm, smells of the bright young things out there today), yet out of money, cut off by her parents, and forced to turn herself over to an upscale madam, who agrees to pay off Jude’'s debts if she works as a courtesan in New York for 2 years. Yet Jude finds her limited moral fiber tested when she falls for an impoverished grad student, and uncovers catastrophic secrets in the family archives....
More:
* Read an excerpt of KEPT @ www.eunyhong.com/Kept_excerpt.
Y. Euny Hong was the first-ever television columnist for the US Edition of The Financial Times. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The International Herald Tribune, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The Forward, among others.
She studied philosophy at Yale University, where she co-founded the satirical magazine Rumpus. She was recently awarded a Fulbright Young Journalists Award.
She is fluent in French, German, and Korean. An extensive traveler, she wrote Kept on four continents. A sometime resident of Germany, South Korea, and the US, she will be spending the next year in Europe to finish her second novel.
*Y. Euny Hong’s MySpace www.myspace.com/eunyhong
*Y. Euny Hong's Blog blog.eunyhong.com
*Y. Euny Hong’s official website, includes links to her novel’s reviews www.eunyhong.com.
* Listen to Y Euny Hong's podcast interview www.podcastdirectory.com
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Posted by TamikoFebruary 15, 2007 at 10:27 PM
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