Tewksbury Public Library

Meeting with my brother, a novella, Yi Mun-yol ; translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl with Yoosup Chang

eng

no index present

fiction

Meeting with my brother

971248025

Yi Mun-yol ; translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl with Yoosup Chang

Weatherhead books on Asia

a novella

"Narrated in the first person, Meeting with My Brother tells the story of a professor's journey to meet with his younger half-brother from North Korea. The professor's father had left his family behind in the South during the Korean War and eventually had another family in the North. The story includes the professor's negotiations with the go-between who arranges the meeting, his participation in a tour group (the necessary excuse to travel to the area in China where the meeting takes place), his interaction with other tour members and Koreans living in the area, and finally his meeting with his brother. The story includes different positions on reunification and illuminates many of the reasons that make reunification difficult. In this new translation the author has added a new vignette that does not appear in the original.""Yi Mun-yol's Meeting with My Brother is narrated by a middle-aged South Korean professor, also named Yi, whose father abandoned his family and defected to the North at the outbreak of the Korean War. Many years later, despite having spent most of his life under a cloud of suspicion as the son of a traitor, Yi is prepared to reunite with his father. Yet before a rendezvous on the Chinese border can be arranged, his father dies. Yi then learns for the first time that he has a half-brother, whom he chooses to meet instead. As the two confront their shared legacy, their encounter takes a surprising turn. Meeting with My Brother represents the political and psychological complexity of Koreans on both sides of the border, offering a complex yet poignant perspective on the divisions between the two countries. Through a series of charged conversations, Yi explores the nuances of reunification, both political and personal. This semiautobiographical account draws on Yi's own experience of growing up with an absent father who defected to the North and the stigma of family disloyalty. First published in Korea in 1994, Meeting with My Brother is a moving and illuminating portrait of the relationships sundered by one of the world's starkest barriers."--Publisher's description