A potent history of a remarkable life.
A captivating depiction of a Korean novelist’s time as a political prisoner and the belief in humanity that sustained him throughout the ordeal.
Hwang (b. 1943) is known for his elegant, philosophically self-reflective writing. In this sprawling, detailed chronicle of his life and various imprisonments, he delivers a vivid depiction of some of the historical currents that shaped Korea in the 20th century. Hwang was imprisoned in Seoul after visiting North Korea, which he fled with his family as a child. Upon returning to South Korea, he was accused of espionage and imprisoned via the National Security Act. Many literary figures and activists relentlessly argued for his release, seeing the act as a facade to suppress free speech and imprison activists unjustly. Hwang’s extraordinary life is so dense with history and characters that his lengthy account can be difficult to follow, but the descriptions of his time as a prisoner will move readers. The story oscillates among Hwang’s imprisonment, life outside prison, exile, time as a soldier in the Vietnam War, and recollections from his childhood. The author recounts eating noodles with the former North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung; how the “boxy cars of the East mingled with the sleek sedans of the West amid echoing cheers” as the Berlin Wall fell in front of him; and how his story, among others, made Susan Sontag “shed tears of anger.” Hwang peppers the narrative with prescriptive visions for relations between North Korea and the rest of the world. He is a consummate storyteller, and even those unfamiliar with the topic will find well-written historical exposition and nuanced characterizations. Hwang clearly appreciates the humanity of those he encounters, including prisoners on death row and even Kim Il-sung, contending that no one is beyond moral repair. Such considerations underscore how penal systems are often designed to dehumanize incarcerated individuals—but not Hwang.
A potent history of a remarkable life.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-83976-083-9
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.
An Egyptian Canadian journalist writes searchingly of this time of war.
“Rules, conventions, morals, reality itself: all exist so long as their existence is convenient to the preservation of power.” So writes El Akkad, who goes on to state that one of the demands of modern power is that those subject to it must imagine that some group of people somewhere are not fully human. El Akkad’s pointed example is Gaza, the current destruction of which, he writes, is causing millions of people around the world to examine the supposedly rules-governed, democratic West and declare, “I want nothing to do with this.” El Akkad, author of the novel American War (2017), discerns hypocrisy and racism in the West’s defense of Ukraine and what he views as indifference toward the Palestinian people. No stranger to war zones himself—El Akkad was a correspondent in Afghanistan and Iraq—he writes with grim matter-of-factness about murdered children, famine, and the deliberate targeting of civilians. With no love for Zionism lost, he offers an equally harsh critique of Hamas, yet another one of the “entities obsessed with violence as an ethos, brutal in their treatment of minority groups who in their view should not exist, and self-decreed to be the true protectors of an entire religion.” Taking a global view, El Akkad, who lives in the U.S., finds almost every government and society wanting, and not least those, he says, that turn away and pretend not to know, behavior that we’ve seen before and that, in the spirit of his title, will one day be explained away until, in the end, it comes down to “a quiet unheard reckoning in the winter of life between the one who said nothing, did nothing, and their own soul.”
A philosophically rich critique of state violence and mass apathy.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2025
ISBN: 9780593804148
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
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