First published 2021
In 1993, acclaimed Korean novelist and democracy activist Hwang Sok-yong receives a five-year sentence to Seoul Detention Center. Behind bars, he confronts the multiple forms of confinement that have shaped his existence. His physical imprisonment becomes a lens through which he examines the restrictions of ideology, language, and a nation split by the Cold War. Hwang traces his journey from childhood in Pyongyang through his years as a young protester challenging South Korea's military rulers, his service as a soldier in Vietnam, and his emergence as a dissident author. Each memory reveals how personal liberation intertwines with political freedom. As he navigates between past and present, Hwang discovers that understanding his own captivity requires mapping the broader transformations that swept through Korean society across decades of upheaval. The memoir becomes both an intimate reckoning with individual choices and a witness to a nation's struggle for democracy and identity.
Genres: historical-fiction, autobiography, biography-memoir, activism
Vibes: dark, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Pyongyang, Seoul, Vietnam
Period: 1993, Cold War
688 pages · Hardcover · Verso Books