Skip to content

Category Archives: Book reviews: memoirs

De profundis

26-Nov-07
Cullen Thomas: Brother One Cell -- Coming of Age in South Korea's Prisons Pan Books, 2007 Stern(4,g) A "powerful, harrowing and moving memoir", proclaims the blurb on the back. "A Korean tear in the muscle round the ribs, a Korean hernia..." reads the selective quote. The cover design, a Getty image of hands grasping prison bars, the typeface like a Robert Ludlum thriller. What horrors are contained in these 408 pages? Brutal beatings by the prison officers? Worse indignities inflicted by follow inmates? You are being misled by the power of puff. In fact the worst indignities the author suffers from his fellow convicts is a bad haircut and a foul on the basketball court. A better picture is painted by the book's subtitle: ...
Also filed in Book reviews: Foreign literature | | Comments (0) »

Guy Delisle: Pyongyang - A Journey in North Korea

17-Nov-06
(Jonathan Cape, 2006) Stern(9,g) An account of a three-month work stint in Pyongyang at around the start of the Bush presidency, this book is neither particularly topical (it's taken some time to be translated from the original French) nor well-titled. But it sure is original. We've read travel accounts of North Korea before; we've heard about the bleakness, the depression ... but maybe we've never seen it. That's where this book scores, because it's rather a unique concept: a travel account in the form of a graphic novel. You can attempt to capture in words the gloominess of Restaurant Number One in one of Pyongyang's few hotels, but to have a picture of it is something else. The graphic nature of the book, ...
Also filed in Book reviews: DPRK, Book reviews: Travel | | Comments (0) »

Susie Younger: Never ending flower

04-Nov-06

Susie Younger: Never ending flower

(Collins Harvill, 1967) Stern(10,g) To describe this book as a memoir of a Catholic missionary in South Korea in the early 1960s, while factually correct, undersells it. Yes, the author is a person of deep Christian faith, but her work in Korea is more that of a social worker than evangelist. And her observations are those of a highly intelligent, practical person armed with an Oxford PPE degree. The book is in part a well-written account of the underbelly of Korean society at the beginning of the Park Chung-hee era. Younger works with the street gangs of Daegu who make small amounts of money cleaning shoes; she starts a home for teenage prostitutes; she helps develop some unpromising acres of hillside into a ...
Also filed in Book reviews: History | Tagged | Comments (0) »

Andrew Holloway: A Year in Pyongyang

10-May-06
(Aidan FC's website, 1988) Stern(7,g) Amid the pile of available reading material on the DPRK, is there room for an unpublished memoir, getting on for 20 years old, recording the experiences of a lowly "raiser" -- someone who converts Konglish into English -- in late 1980s Pyongyang? Definitely yes.
Also filed in Book reviews: DPRK, Book reviews: History, DPRK | | Comments (0) »

Jahyun Kim Haboush (tr): Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong

17-Apr-06
(California UP, 1995) Stern(8,g) The style of this takes a bit of getting used to (and this is attributable to the original author, not the translator), but the content is gripping. This is the autobiographical writings of a Korean crown princess - wife of the heir to the throne - and documents at first hand the intrigues within the Korean court in the second half of the eighteenth century, and describes the distant and awkward relationship between father and son which leads to the madness and death of the latter (the writer's husband). A fascinating insight into the workings of the Confucian-based civil service system, which may be of interest to Sinologists as well as Koreanists. Links: Read a proper review of ...
Also filed in Book reviews: History | | Comments (1) »

Kang Chol-hwan: Aquariums of Pyongyang

16-Feb-06
(Basic Books 2001) Stern(9,g) A harrowing autobiographical account of a young boy's experience in a North Korean concentration camp. Essential reading. Links: Buy Aquariums of Pyongyang at Amazon
Also filed in Book reviews: DPRK, DPRK | | Comments (0) »