Summary | Excerpt | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Book Reviewed by:
Lisa Butts
Buy This Book
The Liberators begins in the city of Daejeon in South Korea. The year is 1980 and the country is ruled by a military regime that is imprisoning and disappearing suspected dissenters at an alarming rate. Twenty-three-year-old Insuk has fallen in love with a classmate at her university named Sungho. Her father Yohan approves of the match, but just as they're preparing to celebrate the union, Yohan fails to return home one evening. Insuk never sees him again.
Sungho and Insuk marry; their first night as man and wife sets the tone for their relationship going forward — Sungho's mother Huran, with whom he lives, lays a heavy guilt trip on the newlyweds for taking the bedroom, relegating Huran to a bed by the stove in the kitchen.
By 1988, Sungho and Insuk have a five-year-old son, Henry, and the family (including Huran) have relocated to San Jose, California. After years of ...
BookBrowse's reviews and "beyond the book" articles are part of the many benefits of membership and, thus, are generally only available to subscribers, including individual members and patrons of libraries that subscribe.
Join Today
If you liked The Liberators, try these:
by Heinz Insu Fenkl
Published 2023
A "mesmerizing" (PW, James McBride) "magnificent" (Ha Jin) intergenerational coming-of-age novel set in South Korea—about friendship, belonging, and displacement.
by Wiz Wharton
Published 2023
Set between the last years of the "Chinese Windrush" in 1966 and Hong Kong's Handover to China in 1997, a mysterious inheritance sees a young woman from London uncovering buried secrets in her late mother's homeland in this captivating, wry debut about family, identity, and the price of belonging.
The House on Biscayne Bay
by Chanel Cleeton
As death stalks a gothic mansion in Miami, the lives of two women intertwine as the past and present collide.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
