The prisoner

Author / Creator

Hwang, Sŏg-yŏng, 1943- author

Available as

Physical

Summary

A sweeping account of modern Korean history and a vivid memoir of political persecution from Korea's most acclaimed novelist. In 1993, Hwang Sok-yong returned to South Korea after four years of exi...

A sweeping account of modern Korean history and a vivid memoir of political persecution from Korea's most acclaimed novelist. In 1993, Hwang Sok-yong returned to South Korea after four years of exile. Upon reentering the country, the celebrated writer and democracy activist was arrested and sentenced to five years in the Seoul Detemtion Center for having visited North Korea, which he had fled with his family as a child at the start of the Korean War. In this impactful memmoir, Hwang/s life is set against the volities political backdrop of modern Korea, a country subject to colonialism, Cold War division, a devastating war, decades of authoritarian dictatorships, a mass democratic uprising, and a still-lingering, painful division between North and South. The Prisoner moves between Hwang's comfinement and scenes from his life on the outside - as a boy in Pyongyang and Seoul, as a young activist protesting South Korea's military dictatorships, as a soldier in the Vietnam War, as a dissident writer in exile. Hwang's writing braids an extraordinary life into the dramatic revolutions and transformations of twentieth-century Korea. --

Show More