Author's Death Boosts Sales of Bawdy Novel

The suicide of novelist Ma Kwang-soo last week has triggered high demand for his sexually explicit novels, especially "Happy Sara."

Copies of the novel are flying off the shelves in secondhand book stores at prices 10 to 30 times higher than before his death.

The original "Happy Sara," which was published in 1991, is still banned in Korea, and only secondhand copies are available. But where they would sell for W4.300 before his death, they now fetch W250,000 (US$1=W1,129).

"Happy Sara" was reissued in an expurgated version in 1992, and even those copies have soared from W5,800 before the novelist's death to W50,000 to W100,000.