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Edition: U.S. Article Comments (0) Editor's Choice Cannes Film Festival offers some Oscar clues Greetings trump giveaways at luxury hotels Ohio State coach Tressel resigns Illinois House approves bill allowing casino in Chicago Hip-hop star Sean Kingston stable after water crash Federer ready to tackle Monfils and French crowd Courtney Love sued again for defamation on Twitter Comment: Argentina’s soccer team settles outstanding debt with the Virgin Video: B.B. King rocks Memorial Day Slideshow: Hollywood on Broadway Follow Reuters Facebook Twitter RSS YouTube Read Air France crash sparks pilot mystery 30 May 2011 Bus crash in Virginia kills four and injures 54 4:20pm EDT Killer bacteria claims victims in Germany, Sweden | 3:29pm EDT NY Rep. Weiner hires lawyer after alleged Twitter hacking 1:06pm EDT Cheryl Cole out of UK "X Factor" after U.S. hitch 12:47pm EDT Discussed 75 $1 trillion on the table in U.S. debt talks 59 Judge voids controversial Wisconsin union law 51 Speculation grows over Sarah Palin’s 2012 plans Watched Scientists revive ancient spider in stunning 3D detail Tue, May 24 2011 Massive Australian waterspout caught on film Mon, May 30 2011 GM pulls the plug Fri, May 27 2011 Missing mother looms large in Korean novel Tweet Share this By Nick Olivari NEW YORK (Reuters) - It's a simple premise -- losing your illiterate mother on the Seoul subway. But what the characters and readers of "Please Look After Mom" by South Korean author Kyung-sook Shin discover is that in the mother's... Email Print Related News Book Talk: A murder in Japan--but who is the real villain? Thu, May 26 2011 Schwarzenegger fathered child outside marriage Tue, May 17 2011 U.S. woman documents homelessness in memoir Thu, May 12 2011 Bestseller Jeffrey Archer launches five-novel saga Thu, May 12 2011 Analysis & Opinion Kucch Luv Jaisaa: Not a fun ride Can we please calm down about DSK? Related Topics Entertainment » Fashion » By Nick Olivari NEW YORK | Tue May 31, 2011 4:34pm EDT NEW YORK (Reuters) - It's a simple premise -- losing your illiterate mother on the Seoul subway. But what the characters and readers of "Please Look After Mom" by South Korean author Kyung-sook Shin discover is that in the mother's absence she is only more powerfully present. The novel is Shin's first book translated into English, after selling 1.5 million copies in her native Korea. It is not autographical but Shin admits through a translator there is a large dose of family anecdotal history in the narrative. Her 74-year-old mother is a major source of inspiration, "a little pond that never dries up," Shin said. So much so, that she will chat to her for a few hours by telephone when she has writer's block. Like the first daughter in the novel, also a writer, Shin promised her mother at 16 when she left the countryside to finish her education in Seoul that she would one day write a novel about her. Shin, 47, began and stopped several times, writing other books and short stories until in 2007 she wrote a single sentence: "It's been one week since Mom went missing." "And all the untold stories not told before came gushing out," Shin said. "Once started, I could not understand why I was not able to start. There were so many stories to tell, and I was deeply engaged in the writing process." The mother of Shin's story may be illiterate but like all mothers she is anything but simple. She sacrificed her own goals and aspirations for her children and her husband. She is a woman her children never knew. "Moms are not simple," Shin said. "Moms are like a thick book, the more you read, the more pages to be read." The mother of the novel is not the woman Shin would have written about at 16, but she said after watching her own mother age and sicken she has wrapped more human intimacy into the book's characters and their relationships. Shin is happy with the translation, though the Korean version is more emotionally rich because the mother speaks in a regional dialect which differentiates her in the Korean narrative. In the English version the mother is powerful enough, particularly as the voices of all the characters other than the mother are narrated in the second person. "It's only the mom who uses the first person, 'I'," said Shin. "I had in mind the fact that, when a woman becomes a mom, she no longer has the time to live as 'I,' so made only Mom be able to speak as 'I.' The mother, like most mothers who subjugate themselves to their children's future, is treated until her disappearance like most children treat their parents, relegated to secondary importance, an appendage to their daily lives. But the mother retains her dignity and her secrets and in vanishing on the Seoul subway looms larger than ever in her children's lives. The first word children learn is mother, said Chin. "If (the reader) remembers that, it would make me really happy," Shin said. "If they remember moms were never born as moms but became moms." Shin is married and lives in the Pyeongchang-dong area of Seoul. Her mother still lives in the house where Shin was born in Chongup, south of Seoul in the south west Korean peninsula. Regarding her own life, Shin said she has more unfulfilled dreams than fulfilled ones with one being "to write a book so beautiful that other people want to memorize it from the first to the last word." (Reporting by Nick Olivari, editing by Patricia Reaney) Entertainment Fashion Tweet this Link this Share this Digg this Email Reprints We welcome comments that advance the story directly or with relevant tangential information. We try to block comments that use offensive language, all capital letters or appear to be spam, and we review comments frequently to ensure they meet our standards. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. Comments (0) Be the first to comment on reuters.com. Add yours using the box above. 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