유령의 시간

Drawn from the author's own father, the novel follows Yi Seop, a socialist wanted during the war who went north for his beliefs, found that the North was not the society he had dreamed of, and made his way back to his family in the South. By then his elder brother had taken his two sons north, and his wife had followed. Remarried with four more children, he cannot bring himself to strike his first wife from the family register, and lives torn between longing and guilt. In the 1970s, as hopes raised by talks between the two Koreas fade and a new security law lets former ideological prisoners be locked up again without trial, he begins writing down his life. Years later his daughter learns that his first wife and sons are alive in the North and finishes the memoir from his diaries.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

260 pages in the original

Genres

Family, Politics, Autofiction (assigned by AI)

Set in

South Korea, 1970s

First published

2015 by Silcheon Munhak

ISBN

9788939207363 (original)