White Badge
A Novel of Korea
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This novel about a former soldier haunted by the past is “the first major book about Korean involvement in the Vietnam War” (Los Angeles Times).
Han Kiju is an executive in Seoul, a modern Korean intellectual who works in book publishing. But he has never fully come to grips with his memories of war—first the conflict that gripped his own country, and then his time in Vietnam.
When an old comrade-in-arms, a coward who crumpled in battle, begins to follow him, Kiju must finally deal with the ghosts of the past haunting his present, in this brutal, evocative tale of combat.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This 1983 war novel by Korean journalist Ahn was a sensation in his native land, but will hold less interest for Western readers. A gritty, brutal account of the horrors of combat, told retrospectively by a man who lived through the Korean and Vietnam wars and now scouts foreign manuscripts for a publishing house, the narrative will startle readers by its familiarity. (``In my childhood war, everybody around me was in the same war,'' he writes. ``But in Vietnam, we fought alone, by ourselves.'') Ahn's depiction of war is evocative and relentless, but his hastily sketched characterizations rob his story of emotional vitality; as in old war movies, the members of the platoon depicted here are distinguishable only by their nicknames. An equally serious drawback is the author's rickety translation of his own work, which often strikes awkward notes.
