Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Nov 2023
240 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Extraordinarily beautiful and deeply moving, The Liberators is an elegantly wrought family saga of memory, trauma, and empathy, and a stunning testament to the consequences and fortunes of inheritance.
At the height of the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk and Sungho are arranged to be married. The couple soon moves to San Jose, California, with an infant and Sungho's overbearing mother-in-law. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and her divided homeland, finding herself drawn into an illicit relationship that sets into motion a dramatic saga and echoes for generations to come.
From the Gwangju Massacre to the 1988 Olympics, flashbacks to Korean repatriation after Japanese surrender, and the Sewol ferry accident, E. J. Koh's exquisitely drawn portraits and symphonic testimony from guards, prisoners, perpetrators, and liberators spans continents and four generations of two Korean families forever changed by fateful past decisions made in love and war.
"A moving and lyrical debut novel... . Koh has fully harnessed her potential in this assured outing."
―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A mesmerizing, delicately crafted novel ... . Koh's poetic prose delights with surprising metaphors and a cast of skillfully rendered characters."
―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Another resounding triumph for E.J. Koh: a brave exploration of the complexities of the human experience and the impossible task of making peace with the past." —BookPage (starred review)
"A soaring multigenerational saga about learning to accept the past without letting it overshadow the future." —Foreword Reviews (starred review)
"Koh produces another Intricately accomplished, intimate melding of history and storytelling." —Booklist
"As always, Koh's singular grasp of language results in achingly beautiful writing."
―San Francisco Chronicle, A Best Book of Fall
"Kaleidoscopic... . exquisite... . A family saga which manages to infuse the historical with the mythic, blend the epic with the intimate... . extraordinary."
―Lit Hub
"An epic saga."
―Book Page, A Most Anticipated Fiction Book of Fall 2023
"Spare, beautiful and richly layered, The Liberators is dazzling."
―Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
This information about The Liberators was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
E. J. Koh is the author of The Magical Language of Others, which won a Washington State Book Award, Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Association for Asian American Studies Book Award, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. Koh is also the author of the poetry collection A Lesser Love, a Pleiades Press Editors Prize for Poetry winner. Koh's work has appeared in AGNI, the Atlantic, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry, Slate, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. Koh earned her MFA at Columbia University and her PhD at the University of Washington, and has received National Endowment for the Arts and MacDowell fellowships. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
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