
The Accusation
Forbidden Stories From Inside North Korea
Bandi(Author)
Serpent's Tail (Publisher)
Published on 2. March 2017
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-1-78125-871-2 (ISBN)
Description
In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung's totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea and set for publication around the world in 2017, The Accusation provides a unique and shocking window on this most secretive of countries.
Bandi's profound, deeply moving, vividly characterised stories tell of ordinary men and women facing the terrible absurdity of daily life in North Korea: a factory supervisor caught between loyalty to an old friend and loyalty to the Party; a woman struggling to feed her husband through the great famine; the staunch Party man whose actor son reveals to him the absurd theatre of their reality; the mother raising her child in a world where the all-pervasive propaganda is the very stuff of childhood nightmare.
The Accusation is a heartbreaking portrayal of the realities of life in North Korea. It is also a reminder that humanity can sustain hope even in the most desperate of circumstances - and that the courage of free thought has a power far beyond those seek to suppress it.
Bandi's profound, deeply moving, vividly characterised stories tell of ordinary men and women facing the terrible absurdity of daily life in North Korea: a factory supervisor caught between loyalty to an old friend and loyalty to the Party; a woman struggling to feed her husband through the great famine; the staunch Party man whose actor son reveals to him the absurd theatre of their reality; the mother raising her child in a world where the all-pervasive propaganda is the very stuff of childhood nightmare.
The Accusation is a heartbreaking portrayal of the realities of life in North Korea. It is also a reminder that humanity can sustain hope even in the most desperate of circumstances - and that the courage of free thought has a power far beyond those seek to suppress it.
Reviews / Votes
The Solzhenitsyn of Pyongyang ... A luminous testimony, crammed with irony, on the insane regime of Kim Il-Sung and the hopelessness of the citizens of North Korea * L'Express * Even if one did not know anything about the writer or the way the manuscript was smuggled out of the country, it would not diminish the fact that the force of this collection of novellas evokes the classics of world literature about totalitarianism * L'ours *More details
Edition
Export/Airside - Export
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Profile Books Ltd
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 135 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
313 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78125-871-2 (9781781258712)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Bandi is the Korean word for firefly. It is the pseudonym of an anonymous dissident writer still living in North Korea.