Minsoo Kang

1 universe Last reviewed 2026-08-19

Minsoo Kang was born in 1967 in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up internationally as the son of a diplomat, living in Korea, Austria, New Zealand, Iran, Germany, and Brunei; his mother is a professor of French literature. He earned a BA in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Southern California (1988), an MA in European history from UCLA (1991), and a PhD in European history, also from UCLA (2004). He is an associate professor of European intellectual history at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century France, Britain, and Germany, as well as early modern European-East Asian interactions. His genre fiction includes Of Tales and Enigmas (2006), a collection of essays and short stories that draws on Western genre-fiction traditions to explore his own vision of Korean history, creating what critics described as a surrealistic landscape where histories, ideas, and legends intermingle; his short story 'A Fearful Symmetry' was selected for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007. He is also the author of Sublime Dreams of Living Machines, a scholarly study of automata across European history, and the novel The Melancholy of Untold History (2024), which reviewers praised for weaving together philosophy, mythology, and grief. Kang's work bridges academic history and speculative fiction, frequently reimagining Korean and East Asian historical material through a fantastical lens.

Universe(s)

Books

• The Melancholy of Untold History (2024) · The Melancholy of Untold History Core Canon

Aggregate across all universes

• Total Core Canon books across all universes: 1 book
• Award recognitions across all universes: 1 (1 won)

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