The Melancholy of Untold History
core novel 2024 The Melancholy of Untold History
Record
| First published | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.59 (1,150 ratings, collected 2026-08-19) |
| Page count | 240 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780063337503 |
Synopsis
The Melancholy of Untold History is a literary fantasy that interweaves Korean mythology with an invented, centuries-spanning history of a fictional Korean kingdom, moving between the tales told about ancient rulers, gods and legendary events and the more intimate, modern-day story of a historian and her estranged son grappling with grief and memory. The novel is structured as a set of nested and overlapping narratives -- myth, chronicle and personal history -- that comment on one another as the book moves back and forth across time, examining how stories about the past are shaped, distorted and passed down by the people who tell them. Its focus falls less on a single continuous plot than on the way legend and lived experience blur together, using invented Korean-inspired myth to explore loss, storytelling and the unreliable boundary between history and folklore.
Where it sits
- Universe: The Melancholy of Untold History
- Series: not part of a registered series (standalone work within its universe)
- Author: Minsoo Kang
Awards (verified)
- Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature (Adult Literature), 2025: won; Confirmed directly via mythsoc.org's own 2025 awards results page.
Sources
← The Melancholy of Untold History dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.