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Review: Manja of de zeven lagen der ziltheid by Dimitri Leue

Kim — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 15:00:00 +0000

In Manja of de zeven lagen der ziltheid, Dimitri Leue takes you on an artistic exploration through the museum and one’s self.

Please note that Manja of de zeven lagen der ziltheid (Manja or the seven layers of saltiness) is written in Dutch by a Belgian author. There is no English translation and there might never be one. I translated my review from Dutch to English because I think this is an interesting book that deserves to be known beyond the Dutch-speaking world and especially to visitors of the KMSKA in Antwerp, Belgium.

Location: KMSKA museum in Antwerp

Manja of de zeven lagen der ziltheid synopsis

A restorer in a museum, while restoring paintings, finds himself forced to take a look at his own life as well. To courageously remove layer after layer and thereby get closer to the urge and the dream, finally getting away from the endless longing.

Book review

 5/5

The mysterious and inscrutable looks of people in works of art; what might they be thinking?

Dimitri Leue swaps the viewer with the viewed. He reduces the distance between the person in the canvas and the viewer through a game of seduction. Who is surprised by whom? Does your object marvel at the fact that you are watching it when he or she catches your gaze? For other visitors, you yourself could be the object in the artwork known as people watching.

She was my preview. I her afterimage

The drawings and the text go well together. The author has a smooth writing style where the short sentences are rendered so that there are few words per line. The images are louder than the words. This appeals to me because it is different from most books I read. You fly through the pages and elineveer’s beautiful illustrations take your understanding to another level. The text is like the thoughts you might have when walking around a museum, except my own thoughts would be quite different. You are looking through the eyes of a restorer who looks at some works longer than most of us.

Manja of de zeven lagen der ziltheid brings the works in the museum to life; a book like this should exist for every museum to improve your visiting experience. In case you don’t know all the artworks, like me, you can look them up via the list in the back of the book. Then you will see more in the merging of Gustave Courbet’s Rochers près d’Ornans and L’Origine du Monde than just a drawing of a vagina combined with the earth lying flat on its back, with the mountain range spread open and water flowing out.

What was, still is. But more is on its way

The scientist opposes the artist, the male energy faces the female energy. The obsession with the female body in the first layers finds a home in a story about gender diversity. The later layers take you from the physical to the psychological. The thoughts of philosophers, the painters and the painted, as well as us and the people we see are placed directly opposite each other without one knowing what the other is thinking.

Who watches, wants to be seen

Manja of de zeven lagen der ziltheid is a book that first provokes me, and then makes me think. What does the person I see in front of me think or what do those I don’t see think? While reading the first layers, I wondered how long I will accept reading about human bodies, but after I finish the book, my opinion of the first layers changes. This is a book about self-love and being yourself. Highly recommended! But not for everyone because of the format of the book, the limited but present naming of body parts and a dose of negative thoughts in a journey in which the narrator explores the self.

Interested?

Buy (the Dutch version of) Manja of de zeven lagen der ziltheid via Bol.com of Amazon NL.

Book details

Title: Manja of de zeven lagen der ziltheid
Author: Dimitri Leue
Illustrations: elineveer
Language: Dutch
Publisher: Standaard Uitgeverij
Pages: 144
ISBN (13):9789022339374
Publication date: 13 September 2022

About the author and illustrator

Dimitri Leue (born 1974) is an actor, director and writer. In 2016, he made his debut with Het Lortchersyndroom. The book was nominated for De Bronzen Uil. February 2022 saw the publication of Wij is niets, a story about sins, love and the lightness of life.

Eline van Eerdenbrugh (1980) graduated as a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Besides creating her own work and illustrations as elineveer, she teaches drawing to adults and children at the Academy of Fine Arts of Heist-op-den-Berg. This is her debut as a book illustrator.

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Review: Flock Without Birds by Filip Dousek

Kim — Mon, 16 May 2022 14:00:00 +0000

Flock Without Birds by Filip Dousek is an intriguing book about the (shattered) illusions that create our world and the possibilities and existences available in our reality.

Location: Cambridge (UK) with trips to London, Prague, Tōhoku (Japan), India

Flock Without Birds synopsis

A genre-bending, mind-altering novel about the illusions that make up our world.

Flock Without Birds comes in two volumes, with neither one first or second – it’s up to the reader to start with the Story or the Book.

In the Story, an aging philosopher tells the tale of the Book – a tale of love that spans centuries, continents, and precious texts. Adam, who will one day write the Book, is a young PhD student torn between love and his obsession – coding an algorithm to sift the world’s data and find God, dead or alive. But a series of mysterious paintings lead him on a winding journey from Cambridge through a Faustian bargain to the edge of reason. Meanwhile in his library, Toito the philosopher calls into question everything there is to believe about Adam – and our world.

The Book – Adam’s journal from a foreign prison – promises to cure the divisions that plague the world. Their root cause isn’t politics, capitalism, race, religion, or media. A deeper layer, obvious and invisible, forms what we think, believe, and do. It shapes our wars and our relationships. Unless we confront these illusions, we will remain slaves to the obvious and lose the greatest freedom – the freedom to create a different world. The code – and the key – is within the human mind. But will Adam himself manage such a feat? Can he escape the prisons of the body and of the mind, and regain his love?

After reading both volumes, Adam’s story – and our society – will look very different in the end. Two tales, separate and intertwined, ask the question: where does the whole end and the part begin? What is a flock without birds?

Book review

 5/5

If you want to understand a book, does that mean you should read it?

The prologue triggered me immediately. It also made me wish that I could follow more than one path and read both the book and the story first, mix them up or maybe read them at the same time. In the end, I started with the story because that was the first part in the ebook.

In the story, Adam tests his understanding of the world through his relationships with other people, such as his girlfriend Nina whose artistic project turns out to be rather interesting. He searches for universal order with his programming of the Faustomat and goes in search of the Cambridge archives with alumni data to use as human input for calculating karma. But what is he really looking for with this project?

Who is telling the story?

The storyteller is a competent narrator, but who is he? Where does the author end and Adam begin? There are chapters nestled in between that don’t “fit,” mixing another voice with one that is Adam’s. Time and story lines are fluid and so is the boundary between what is inside the story and what is outside it. Flock Without Birds combines many of my interests as it touches on topics such as technology, philosophy, myths, religion, social intelligence, art and science.

“Intuitively, their disparate time and space fractals had to merge in order to thrust the self into a new dimension.”

The possibility of alternate realities weighs heavily on Adam as he considers how hundreds of surrogate infidel Adams crowd the only faithful one. His dilemma makes you think about the things you do and the things you give up. The idea is that even if you do only half of the calculated sum totals of your life, you might avoid boredom. Although you lose all other paths when you choose, the old portraits that fascinate Adam for a long time show that with time come new possibilities.

The many lives not lived remain as unexplored as the many possible stories in Mallarmé’s book Le Livre. It shows that when what you are trying to accomplish has a gigantic scope, it can prevent you from accomplishing smaller parts and you might never deliver anything at all. Even myths are built from smaller tropes. It’s good to dream big and have the audacity to go for the absolute. The elderly version of you is not better than you: he or she has only experienced what you decide to do.

Infinite possibilities

“Perhaps the enigma of the world hides not in what escapes me, but in what I see.”

After the story comes the book, with some deliberate self-reflection and more philosophy. I won’t say more as not to ruin your chance to find out how they go together. I want to reread Flock Without Birds to catch what I missed on the first read, so I ordered the hardcover edition to do just that; that’s how intrigued I was by this book. It is a book full of terminal paradoxes. How would you explain Adam?

I enjoyed trying to see the world as Adam sees it. The story is well-crafted. The author introduces many concepts and illustrates them in different ways. I like the narrative tone, the scope of the topics, and the choices and challenges the author voices. Flock Without Birds is focused on the future.

Recommendation

Filip Dousek wrote a fascinating book; one that is thoroughly unique. It’s been a while since I read a book that made me pause and consider what’s being said this much. So far my favorite read of this year. Read this if you crave something challenging that can serve as inspiration for your future.

One last takeaway (not per se groundbreaking): if you take a step away from pursuing your individual dreams and convictions, you may discover that you are right in the middle of where you aspired to be unintentionally.

Interested?

Pre-order your copy of Flock Without Birds from Amazon (available 24 May 2022).

Book details

Title: Flock Without Birds
Author: Filip Dousek
Translators (from Czech): Filip Dousek and Ian Mikyska
Language: English
Publisher: Toito Publishing
Pages: 450
ISBN (13): 9788090785106
Publication date: 24 May 2022

About the author

Filip Dousek is an AI & analytics expert. He was the founder and CEO of Stories.bi, one of the first startups in the world to automate big data analysis. The company was named a Gartner Cool Vendor and was acquired by Workday, Inc. The technology is getting fantastic traction and is still pioneering AI-powered analytics. But before Stories, Filip wrote a novel. It took him 12 years to complete and was about a Cambridge PhD coding AI to find God, the order of the Universe or at least the mother of all fractals. It was also about the centurial shift from objects to relationships and how it will change everything we know. In short, he wrote Flock of Birds in 2012 as fiction. A few years later he built Stories and made it real.

Many thanks to Toito Publishing and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

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Review: Bolla by Pajtim Statovci

Kim — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 15:00:00 +0000

Bolla by Pajtim Statovci is a dark and tragic story told by a man whose mental and physical freedom is limited by the world he lives in.

Location: mainly Kosovo

Bolla synopsis

April 1995. Arsim is a 24-year-old, recently married student at the University of Pristina, in Kosovo, keeping his head down to gain a university degree in a time and place deeply hostile to Albanians. In a café he meets a young man named Miloš, a Serb. Before the day is out, everything has changed for both of them, and within a week two milestones erupt in Arsim’s married life: his wife announces her first pregnancy and he begins a life in secret.

After these fevered beginnings, Arsim and Miloš’s unlikely affair is derailed by the outbreak of war, which sends Arsim’s fledgling family abroad and timid Miloš spiraling down a dark path, as depicted through chaotic journal entries. Years later, deported back to Pristina after a spell in prison and now alone and hopeless, Arsim finds himself in a broken reality that makes him completely question his past. What happened to him, to them, exactly? How much can you endure, and forgive?

Entwined with their story is a re-created legend of a demonic serpent, Bolla; it’s an unearthly tale that gives Arsim and Miloš a language through which to reflect on what they once had. With luminous prose and a delicate eye, Pajtim Statovci delivers a relentless novel of desire, destruction, intimacy, and the different fronts of war.

Book review

 5/5

The story of Arsim and Miloš takes place during the Serbian occupation of Pristina (Kosovo) and after. I can feel their distress, their lack of direction and unhappiness, and also the end of their hopes and dreams when they realize that the life they could have had may never be. Bolla is a dark and tragic story. Do not read this book if you want to avoid sex scenes between men, including one with a minor, and violence.

Hardship jumps off the pages

The setting is vividly described and the scenes come to life like in a movie. I love the author’s expressive writing style and the translation reads smoothly (although I can’t compare with the original Finnish version). So much is said in one page and you understand a lot about the situation in a very natural way. The feelings embedded in the long sentences sneak up on you like the Bolla the book is named after.

As you progress through the book, it becomes clear that Arsim is mentally torn by the distance between his desired and expressed identity in a country that is not quite his own. He loves a man – the enemy – goes on a (sex) date with a minor and doesn’t know how to be a husband and father within the confines of his traditional family. I can feel his struggle and his need to explore his desires. He has much love to give, but is not free to do so. It is almost as if one part of his life does not exist at the same time as the other.

Both Arsim and Miloš think a lot about their own lives and the lives of others. They wait to see what happens to them and live that way. It feels passive, but what choice do they really have? There are only a few opportunities for change, and they are getting harder and harder to grasp. They take what belongs to them, which is less than it could be. Until Arsim goes after everything that is taken from him….

Conclusion

Bolla really impressed me. It is a very emotional story told by a man whose mental and physical freedom is limited. The pain and the endlessness of it all are expressed in a very effective way. In his thirties, Arsim has had a lifetime’s worth of experiences.

Interested?

Buy your copy of Bolla from Amazon.

Book details

Title: Bolla
Author: Pajtim Statovci
Translator (from Finnish): David Hackston
Language: English
Publisher: Pantheon
Pages: 240
ISBN (13): 9781524749200
Publication date: 6 July 2021

About the author and translator

Pajtim Statovci was born in Kosovo to Albanian parents in 1990. His family fled the Yugoslav wars and moved to Finland when he was two years old. He holds an MA in comparative literature and is a PhD candidate at the University of Helsinki. His first book, My Cat Yugoslavia, won the Helsingin Sanomat Literature Prize for best debut novel; his second novel, Crossing, was a finalist for the National Book Award; and Bolla was awarded Finland’s highest literary honor, The Finlandia Prize. In 2018, he received the Helsinki Writer of the Year Award.

David Hackston is a British translator of Finnish and Swedish literature and drama. He graduated from University College London with a degree in Scandinavian Studies and now lives in Helsinki where he works as a freelance translator. Notable recent publications include the Anna Fekete trilogy by Kati Hiekkapelto, Katja Kettu’s wartime epic The Midwife, four novels by ‘Helsinki noir’ author Antti Tuomainen, and Pajtim Statovci’s enigmatic My Cat Yugoslavia and Crossing.

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Review: Winter in Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin

Kim — Mon, 01 Jun 2020 14:00:00 +0000

Winter in Sokcho by French author Elisa Shua Dusapin is a beautiful story, wonderfully crafted with a deeper layer underneath.

Location: set in Sokcho, South Korea

Winter in Sokcho synopsis

It’s winter in Sokcho, a tourist town on the border between South and North Korea. The cold slows everything down. Bodies are red and raw, the fish turn venomous, beyond the beach guns point out from the North’s watchtowers. A young French Korean woman works as a receptionist in a tired guesthouse. One evening, an unexpected guest arrives: a French cartoonist determined to find inspiration in this desolate landscape.

The two form an uneasy relationship. When she agrees to accompany him on trips to discover an ‘authentic’ Korea, they visit snowy mountaintops and dramatic waterfalls, and cross into North Korea. But he takes no interest in the Sokcho she knows – the gaudy neon lights, the scars of war, the fish market where her mother works. As she’s pulled into his vision and taken in by his drawings, she strikes upon a way to finally be seen.

Book review

 5/5

Winter in Sokcho by French author Elisa Shua Dusapin is a wonderful travel guide in the form of a novel. If you’re planning or considering visiting Sokcho in South Korea, then I highly recommend reading this book. It’s fun and it really gives you the feeling you’re out there exploring Sokcho.

You’ll read about the must-see places of Sokcho like Seoraksan National Park, Goseong Demilitarized Zone and Naksan Temple, and learn about Korean food and traditions, family expectations and what it feels like to live in a remote seaside town enclosed by mountains and sea.

The writing style is pleasant. The scenes are intriguing, especially those in which the visitor from France is working on his drawings. I feel like quoting all of them, but I won’t so you can experience them yourself. Just this one: “I pictured Kerrand, his fingers scurrying like spiders’ legs, his eyes travelling up, scrutinising the model, looking down at the paper again, looking back up to make sure his pen conveyed the truth of his vision, to keep her from vanishing while he traced the lines.”

The French artist is looking for perfection while our narrator is not looking for anything specific at all. The contrast makes for interesting conversations as she tries to understand him. A returning topic is the absence of women in the drawings, despite the many times she saw him draw one. He wants to be sure she is perfect before he fixes her by drawing her in ink, and she wonders what a woman has to be like to earn the right to appear alongside his character on paper.

He works with ink on paper, she and her mother handle ink from fish. When she pierces the ink sac and the octopus dish turns out greyish it is similar to how he blacks out his drawing of a woman. He is afraid of finishing because then he’d have no control over it anymore. So he searches for something that never ends and is all-encompassing. Is it common for people to long for that or do we only wish that upon others, to keep them with us, always? A man or woman for all time. An eternal book or a blog?

Winter in Sokcho is a beautiful story, wonderfully crafted with a deeper layer underneath. The pacing is good and the writing style (and/or very good translation!) fitting. It grabbed my attention from beginning till end and as I’m writing this I’m still pondering about the woman in ink. The book gives off this fairytale feeling like the story continues after we close the book. Even though there are no words left on paper, the characters live on without us, in their own isolated part of the world called Sokcho. Recommended!

Translated from French by Aneesa Higgins.

Interested?

You can get your copy of Winter in Sokcho from Amazon.

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Review: Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

Kim — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 14:00:00 +0000

In Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings, the submissive, the witch, and the rebel all deal with society’s expectations in their own way. A mix of humor, fantasy, and survival on top of everything that is wrong with society.

Earthlings synopsis

Natsuki isn’t like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what. Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki’s family are increasing, her friends wonder why she’s still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki’s childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?

Book review

 5/5

Earthlings starts as a story about two kids with a wild imagination spending summer at what seems like a lovely family gathering. Yuu and Natsuki promise each other to “Survive, whatever it takes.” This sentence seems innocent at first but gets a whole new meaning as the story progresses. Yuu goes along with everything Natsuki suggests, while Natsuki hides in her fantasies. Without the support of her family, she has no defense against the abuse she suffers.

She feels like she has to “Survive, whatever it takes”, like a proper Earthling and member of the baby-making Factory. Japanese authors sure like to compare their society to a factory (Hiroko Oyamada’s The Factory comes to mind). The burden to live up to society’s expectations is a central theme in Earthlings. How does one escape from society and the watchful eye of family and friends? By going back to the basics…

A small word of caution: Earthlings contains graphic descriptions of sexual abuse and young kids exploring sex and it doesn’t shy away from discussing incest and sex without consent. Things that are actually happening in society but are often considered not an acceptable topic in fiction. If you don’t want to come across scenes like that, then you shouldn’t read this book.

Through these scenes, Sayaka Murata indirectly discusses real issues in society; issues to which many turn a blind eye because they can’t imagine someone would do something like that. Toyama, Natsuki’s husband, seems like a caricature whenever he opens his mouth. At one point, Toyama’s comments had me laughing out loud before I reread the paragraph and once again realized that what he said was so not done. The absurdness can’t hide that he has no moral/ethical boundaries: as long as it is the opposite of what society stands for it feels right to him. He is the rebel, and like the others, he feels alienated from society.

I liked the scenes where Natsuki channeled her inner witch to deal with her problems (magic realism!) – which is totally the opposite of Yuu’s submissive way of dealing with his problems – and I think this book could have been a fairy tale or fable if the subject were different. What I liked less is the constant comparison of society with the Factory in both the thoughts of the characters and the dialogues. It could have been a bit less.

Half-way the book the story takes an interesting turn. I had not expected this at the beginning, so I was pleasantly surprised and it kept me on my toes as I was increasingly wondering where the characters would lead me next. The synopsis doesn’t give away what kind of book you are gonna read at all.

I really enjoyed reading this novel and the rich fantasies, entertaining dialogues, and messed up characters played a big role in that. At the same time, I was constantly aware of the seriousness of what the main characters had to deal with. Sayaka Murata manages to discuss a heavy topic in a light way without it feeling any less serious. Despite the topic, the book is easy to read. Compared to Murata’s earlier novel Convenience Store Woman, Earthlings has more spirit and emotion.

Translated from Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori.

Interested?

You can pre-order your copy of Earthlings from Amazon. Available October 6, 2020.

Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

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Review: What Makes a City? by Park Seongwon

Kim — Mon, 20 Apr 2020 14:00:00 +0000

What Makes a City? by Korean author Park Seongwon is a short story collection with intriguing stories. All of them deep and moving, discussing heavy themes in a light and dark humor kind of way.

What Makes a City? Synopsis

What Is It That Makes Up a City? provides the reader with an intelligent perspective on the strange culture of our times and a series of adventures through which we explore universal human problems. Family, education, the media, popular culture, technology, alienation, financial power or the lack thereof . . . These are among the most prominent components of the eight stories which comprise this book, in which characters struggle—sometimes in despair, but usually with a sense of humor—to understand or at least accept their place in a world that often makes no sense.

Book review

 5/5

“People lived to be on time, and people were able to go on living as long as they stayed within time. In my dad’s words, leaving – getting out, to the outside of time – is, in fact, death.” Time plays a huge role in the stories in What Makes a City? and especially in By Motorhome to Ulan Bator I and II. While most humans are subject to time’s regime, the nomad is different as the nomad won’t be tamed by time. He is very much alive even though he lives outside of time. If we draw the parallel with the digital nomads of our time I am not sure this holds up. While digital nomads have control over their day to day planning, most of them still have to abide by deadlines.

This brings me to the irony of the dad’s lottery deadline in By Motorhome to Ulan Bator I: there is just no time to waste for the main characters of the story. The kids obviously haven’t mastered the nomad way of thinking. What do they need in life to feel satisfied? When time seems to stop, will they find peace?

This story is followed by the first part of the story the book takes its name from; a story about love and loss, but also about a person being only one small part of a city. “The city, as if it had become a part of those earliest hours, was peacefully interred. He imagined that he was the only one there who could breathe and move, and again he was afraid.” What would it be like to be the only one moving in a big city? Not simply at night, but in general? Or feel like you’re the only one there while you’re actually the one standing still and everyone else is moving. The poor man is in shock and feels like he is dreaming. What do you do when you have no one? Even the little girl doesn’t have the power to draw him back. They could find each other in their loneliness, yet the way the story ends you have a bad feeling about what will happen in the next part of this story and as expected What Makes a City II is one of the darker and sadder stories.

The second part of By Motorhome to Ulan Bator is set in the future. It is about the interconnectedness of people and about meeting people that aren’t part of your usual circle. Even though the circumstances of the main character aren’t great, he still looks towards the future. “The past is a dead thing, and if it isn’t dead, I’ll kill it. So I just dream about the future and about the fantastic.” The writer hits the right tone every single time. I find it very impressive how he can make the characters come to life. “As I ran, I remembered again and again my father’s saying that the nail driven in so deep wouldn’t come out. For me too, it’s over now.” Nothing lasts forever. Hold on to each other while you can and love each other deeply. The world changes, yet not that fast that all will be better in the future. Unless you screw up your ‘now’…

The stories By Motorhome to Ulan Bator I and II and What Makes a City I and II impressed me the most because of the way they made me experience the turmoil and misery but also the moments of joy of the characters. On Logic was a completely different story, amusing me with the crazy turn of events. The main character got himself in such a mess that he deserved to get into trouble because of it.

The Story of a Wife deals with truth and lies and the power of secrets. “Only when a certain amount of a secret has escaped does a secret have value.” It is hard to break the pattern and do better than your parents. You can somewhat understand the main character. I mean, who doesn’t want to feel special sometimes? Especially if you feel your life is perfectly ordinary. “What we see is not the only truth. And not all of what we see is true.”

A Rejected Story also discusses ordinary people. It is about a city in which inhabitants are all the same; they watch the same series and wear the same clothes. Where are their unique identities? From an outside view, city residents are just like a colony of ants. “We’re seeing only the world we can see, and maybe we’re under the delusion that it’s the whole world.”

The last story in the book, Division, is about choices. Will you stand up for what you know is right, or choose your own survival? Never an easy choice especially when the choice you make is not final.

While reading the stories you come across many Korean cultural aspects like funeral habits, mountain hiking and the value of wild ginseng. The importance of marriage and having a family to rely on takes a prominent place in all stories.

Most stories are both dark and light at the same time with funny and positive thoughts over a darker undercurrent. They deal with heavy themes, like pedophilia, affairs, searching for someone, searching for truth, secrets, love, and loss. Yet with a sprinkle of hope, somewhere. Characters come and go and make an appearance in later stories. You recognize them immediately as it is not easy to forget about their struggles. All stories together tell one bigger story about time and about being a part of something bigger. But not a unique part.

After some of these stories I put the book down to think about what I had just read. The beautiful prose and memorable characters and their thoughts stayed with me. The writing style (or translation) made the stories more intense and had the power to draw my mind into the world inside the book. The book provides you with possible meanings and messages, but you can come up with many more while considering how it applies to your life and the way you live. What Makes a City? is not a book to read from cover to back, but rather one where you read a story a day and ponder on the meaning of that single story.

This is easily one of the more interesting books I read this year and also a book that I will reread every now and then. It inspires me to become a better writer and to add more ‘flow’ to my sentences.

Translated from Korean by Chung Hwa Chang and Andrew James Keast.

Interested?

Get your copy of What Makes a City? from Amazon.

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Review: The Disaster Tourist by Yun Ko-eun

Kim — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 11:00:00 +0000

The Disaster Tourist by Korean author Yun Ko-eun is a perfect blend between reality and imagination that questions our view on issues in society. A fun read about a topic that many people love: travel.

The Disaster Tourist synopsis

An eco-thriller with a fierce feminist sensibility, The Disaster Tourist engages with the global dialog around climate activism, dark tourism, and the #MeToo movement.

For ten years, Yona has been stuck behind a desk as a coordinator for Jungle, a travel company specializing in vacation packages to destinations devastated by disaster and climate change. Her work life is uneventful until trouble arises in the form of a predatory colleague.

To forestall any disruption of business-as-usual, Jungle makes Yona a proposition: a paid “vacation” to the desert island of Mui. But Yona must pose as a tourist and assess whether Jungle should continue their partnership with the unprofitable destination.

Yona travels to the remote island, whose major attraction is an underwhelming sinkhole, a huge disappointment to the customers who’ve paid a premium. Soon Yona discovers the resort’s plan to fabricate a catastrophe in the interest of regaining their good standing with Jungle–and the manager enlists Yona’s help. Yona must choose between the callous company to whom she’s dedicated her life, or the possibility of a fresh start in a powerful new position. As she begins to understand the cost of the manufactured disaster, Yona realizes that the lives of Mui’s citizens are in danger–and so is she.

In The Disaster Tourist, Korean author Yun Ko-eun grapples with the consequences of our fascination with disaster, and questions an individual’s culpability in the harm done by their industry.

Book review

 5/5

The blurb made me feel like I was gonna read some over the top political statement book with a naggy female character. The first sentence has all the terms and even the MeToo hashtag in order to appeal to potential readers in the same way the travel agency Jungle tries to sell their disaster travel packages. It made me cringe and hesitate for a bit before I decided to pick it up and I was glad I did!

The Disaster Tourist is about Yona, a salary worker at a tourist agency that sells itineraries to disaster zones. She has a hard time at work, having to deal with sexual harassment from a higher-up so it seems like a blessing in disguise when she is sent on a vacation to evaluate one of the low-performing itineraries. After so many years Yona finally remembers that she works for a travel agency because she loves traveling, except she hardly ever does.

She travels to the island Mui in Vietnam and visits all the tourist traps including the desert sinkhole that is Mui’s disaster site. Her fellow travelers are on this trip for a learning experience. For them it is not about the beauty of the place but more about the ‘I’ve been there’ vibe that travel can bring: “Even though I came close to a disaster, I escaped unscathed: those were the selfish words of solace you told yourself after returning home.” When tourists flood a tourist destination they disrupt the lives of the locals, yet how does a tourist site return to ‘normal’ after it has been turned into one big theme park?

When Yona returns to the island for a second time she gets to experience the non-touristy side of Mui and that is when the real Mui shows itself. Just like Yona no longer turns a blind eye to what’s happening, I, as a reader, start to reflect on my travel experiences as well. I think the type of questions I ask myself will be different from what you will ask yourself, but in essence they come down to the following: are you responsible for what you cause indirectly and more travel-specific: are we destroying the popular tourist spots (the world) beyond repair for those living there? Which is worse, the disaster or the traveler?

“‘It’s too scary to visit disaster destinations close to home,’ Yona explained. ‘Don’t we need to be distanced somewhat from our ordinary lives – from the blankets we sleep under, and the bowls we eat from every day – in order to see the situation more objectively?'” If you turn a blind eye to what’s happening in your everyday life or at your workplace, then you might do the same elsewhere. At first, I thought the ending of the book was unsatisfactory because of some unsolved business that I can’t say more about as to not spoil anything, but gradually, as the actual ending unfolded itself, I came to appreciate it. Maybe Yona’s inability to take hold of her situation fits her character.

Yun Ko-eun crafted the story very skillfully. Her writing style is pleasant and her imagination keeps you entertained. The length of the novel is just right. You can read it as it is and take The Disaster Tourist as a light and fun novel, enjoying the exaggerations and turn of events while secretly wanting to travel to the described destinations. That’s one way to read this book. The other way is to reflect on the themes brought up in relation to your own travels and lifestyle. Do you bring joy or disaster to the places you visit? I felt somewhat chastised and after finishing this book I still don’t know if this was the author’s intention or not. It is also quite possible that she is mocking me for taking it seriously.

The Disaster Tourist by the Korean author Yun Ko-eun is a novel that feels light but is actually quite sophisticated. Yun delivers a perfect blend between reality and imagination and questions our view on issues in society using a topic we all love. Recommended!

Translated from Korean by Lizzie Buehler.

Interested?

You can pre-order your copy of The Disaster Tourist from Amazon. The kindle version will be out on July 2, 2020.

Many thanks to Serpent’s Tail and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

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