THE LIBERATORS, a novel by E.J. Koh, reviewed by Julia Hou
A Novel by E.J. Koh, reviewed by Julia Hou THE LIBERATORS (Tin House Books) E. J. Koh’s latest novel, The Liberators, begins with language, then war, recounting the early memories of Yohan, a newly widowed father in the midst of the Gwangju protests in 1980s South Korea. Loss is inseparable from Yohan’s childhood. At the end of Japanese colonial rule, Yohan was a boy brimming with words: “on a tree, I carved tree…on my mother’s grave, I wrote grave.” He was sent to the military at fifteen, where language loses its light. He leaves having written his last words “on the side of an ICU tent, filled with my dismembered comrades, in the blood I owed them: death, death, death.” In Yohan’s present day, three decades after the Korean War, Korea is still grappling with the aftermath of war and the division of the country into North and South. The … chop! chop! read more!