Beasts of a Little Land
Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize
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4.3 • 6 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
As the Korean independence movement gathers pace, two children meet on the streets of Seoul. Fate will bind them through decades of love and war. They just don’t know it yet.
'Unforgettable' Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, author of The Mountains Sing
It is 1917, and Korea is under Japanese occupation. With the threat of famine looming, ten-year-old Jade is sold by her desperate family to Miss Silver's courtesan school in the bustling city of Pyongyang. As the Japanese army tears through the country, she is forced to flee to the southern city of Seoul. Soon, her path crosses with that of an orphan named JungHo, a chance encounter that will lead to a life-changing friendship.
But when JungHo is pulled into the revolutionary fight for independence, Jade must decide between following her own ambitions and risking everything for the one she loves.
Sweeping through five decades of Korean history, Juhea Kim's sparkling debut is an intricately woven tale of love stretched to breaking point, and two people who refuse to let go.
Longlisted for the HWA Debut Crown Longlist 2022 * Longlisted for the Nota Bene Prize 2023
'A stunning achievement’ TLS
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Kim's dreamy, intense debut is both a sure-footed historical account of the Korean struggle for independence from Japan and the emotionally fraught story of several people whose lives are inextricably tied together. Among the sprawling cast first introduced in 1917 is a starving Korean soldier who meets a Japanese soldier while hunting a tiger, a young woman raped and impregnated by a loutish Japanese officer, and a Seoul street urchin who joins the Communist Party. Several years later, a rickshaw driver makes his way up the economic ladder, and many others factor in over the following decades. At the center of the novel is Jade, the eldest daughter of a poor rural family, who in 1918 is trained as a courtesan and later becomes a famous actor—though that's not the end of her bumpy journey. As the lives of the characters touch, in small ways or large, romances bloom and fade, and fortunes rise and fall. While the members of the Japanese military often verge on being caricatures of villains, and some readers may balk at the novel's coincidences, the prose is ravishing and Kim demonstrates remarkable control of a complicated narrative. Even those with little knowledge of Korean history will come away struck by the way individuals shape and are shaped by the political and cultural changes of the first half of the 20th century. The author's off to a strong start.
