Whale, by Korean writer Cheon Myeong-Kwan, translated by Chi-Young Kim, is a well-written shaggy dog story that reads like an R-rated fairy tale. It was short-listed for the International Booker Prize. Reviewers compare the magical realism of it to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Here’s what The Massachusetts Review says:
https://www.massreview.org/node/11299