by Sandra Hrášková
“When you put American clothes on a browned-skinned doll, what do people see? The clothes? Or the whole doll? Or only the skin?” (Laskar, location 108)
By Sandra Hrášková
Stoker, a 2013 psychological thriller drama film, is the English-language debut of South Korean film director, screenwriter and producer Park Chan-wook. The narrative depicts the unsettling coming of age story of a young woman repressed by her dysfunctional family. Chan-wook is praised as one of the most renowned and favoured filmmakers in South Korea and has also been gradually gaining popularity worldwide. In interviews, he lists both Western and Asian filmmakers as his figures of influence, for instance the Korean producer Ki-duk Kim and the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. As Kurt Osenlund discovered when interviewing Chan-wook, Stoker was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of Doubt.
By Sandra Hrášková
Sharlene Teo is a Singaporean novelist based in the United Kingdom whose fictional pieces have appeared in publications such as Esquire UK, Magma Poetry, and Eunoia Review. She has an LLB in Law from the University of Warwick and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia, where she is currently completing her PhD in Creative and Critical Writing. Aside from being the recipient of the 2013 David T.K. Wong Creative Writing Fellowship and the 2014 Sozopol Fiction Fellowship, Teo is the winner of the inaugural Deborah Rogers Writers’ Award for her debut novel Ponti. Keep Reading
