Our Twisted Hero: Summary and book reviews of Our Twisted Hero by Yi Munyol, plus links to an excerpt from Our Twisted Hero and a biography of Yi Munyol.

When the twelve-year-old narrator of Our Twisted Hero moves from Seoul to a small provincial town and enrolls in the local school, he's confident that his big-city sophistication will establish him as a natural leader. But he immediately falls victim to a charismatic and corrupt class monitor, who uses fear and violence to keep the other students under his mysterious spell and to assure his own supremacy in the school's social hierarchy. The teacher, grateful to have such a well-behaved class, turns a blind eye to the monitor's abuse of power. As the narrator attempts first to seek justice and then to inspire his fellow students to revolt, he finds himself in a fierce battle not just for his rights, but for his soul. Soon he has set in motion an unexpected and unstoppable chain of events. This riveting allegory, in the tradition of Lord of the Flies, starts as a simple power play within a children's classroom, but turns into a chilling tale about the lust for power and desperate need for acceptance that reside within us all. Our Twisted Hero is Yi Munyol's first book ever to be published in North America. With its classically unadorned style and disturbing insights, it will astound readers unfamiliar with this extraordinary writer of world standing.

Media Reviews

Library Journal This universal tale by one of Korea's most popular novelists adeptly describes the hardships of a child subjected to bullying. The plot is engrossing, the characters well developed, and the translation noteworthy. This is the first of Yi Munyol's work to be published in the United States, and it will very likely not be the last.   Publisher's Weekly This deceptively innocent tale of psychological warfare between two elementary school students is the brief but forceful U.S. debut of Korea's most popular fiction writer.... This persuasive and morally enlightened novel makes a winning entrance for Munyol into Western readers' imaginations. Salman Rushdie Our Twisted Hero lifts the curtain on an unknown (to me, anyway) corner of the world to reveal the universality of human frailty. This delicate, unsentimental tale of bully and victim, of a schoolyard prince's rise and fall, reminded me of Gunter Grass's great novella Cat and Mouse. An absorbing book by a major writer.

Recent Reader Reviews

Review (not rated) by Anonymous
Rebecca
Thirty years ago Han Pyongt'ae was 12 when he arrived at a dilapidated rural school in Korea.
With no friends or brothers & an aging teacher who prefers the status quo of the class monitor's insidious & implacable...   Read More

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