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Our Twisted Hero

Author:
Translated by:
Publisher: , 2001
Original title: 우리들의 일그러진 영웅, 1987
Link to online store *

When the twelve-year-old narrator of Our Twisted Hero moves to a small town and enrolls in the local school, he’s confident that his big city sophistication will establish him as a natural leader. He is shocked to find his new classmates and teacher under the spell of the class monitor. As the narrator sets out to overthrow the bully, he is threatened, teased–and finally broken.

LKL says:

Overall, Our Twisted Hero is rather a chore to read, though it is interesting for its balanced assessment of the rights and wrongs of Korea’s developmental dictatorship. But political allegory gets in the way of character delineation, with the result that you feel no sympathy with any of the protagonists; and even reading it as allegory you wonder how far to push the real-world parallels.

LKL rating: score-2score-2score-0score-0score-0. Read our review of this book here.

Read a review by Tony Malone here. Entry on Goodreads.com here.

* Where the book is available from a number of sources, they are prioritised as follows: (1) Amazon UK site, or Bookshop.org for the more recent uploads (2) Amazon US site (3) Other sites in US or Europe, including second-hand outlets (4) LTI Korea, where the title is advertised as available from there (5) Onlines stores in Korea. Links to Bookshop.org and Amazon UK site contain an affiliate code which, should you make a purchase, gives a small commission to LKL at no additional cost to you.