The Guest by Hwang Sok-yongMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is much heavier than the other books I've read by this author (Familiar Things and At Dusk). It is also fundamentally different, dealing quite literally with the ghosts of the past. Two brothers, born in North Korea before the war, who escaped, and then became ministers in the United States. One of the brothers passes away a few days before the younger one goes back to visit North Korea.
None of it is gratuitous, but there is plenty of horror and murder. More specifically, many things that were blamed on the Americans and Japanese, turn out not to have been them at all, but to have been North Koreans against other North Koreans; quite literally neighbor against neighbor and families turning on each other.
Apparently the author caught quite a bit of flack for this novel.
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