Namdo and Provence

The author has a special connection with both Namdo in Korea and Provence in France. She spent three years in Gwangju as a novice assistant professor of sociology at Chonnam National University at the age of thirty-one. And after about thirty years later she spent three or four months at a time in Aix-en-Provence over the course of five years for a research project together with her husband beginning in 2014. In both places, she found a true sense of rest and renewal. Above all, she was deeply drawn to the warmth of the land and its natural surroundings, and to the kindness and generosity of the people. Both places felt deeply familiar to her, as if they were home.Namdo and Provence are geographically far apart, with different languages and histories, yet the two regions as the author experienced them have much in common. Both are known for beautiful landscapes where mountains meet the sea, an abundance of good food, and a rich tradition of writers and artists. Yet perhaps because they lie far from their respective capitals, Seoul and Paris, at the outer reaches of their countries, both are also home to well-known places of exile and imprisonment. Each, in other words, carries a history marked by sorrow.In Namdo and Provence, the author brings her experiences and impressions to life through vivid writing. Moving between the two regions, she explores and compares them through the themes of nature, religion, art, people and food, and history, weaving together the stories of two distant places that came to feel remarkably close.