CHILDREN OF THE SUN

In Allen’s riveting short novel, three young people struggle to survive a hellacious North Korean prison camp.

When young North Korean Ra Eun Seo and her friends find a radio that can broadcast stations from the hated South hidden in the forest (where they are foraging for bark and grasses to make thin soup), Seo is entranced. Somehow—there are snitches everywhere—the authorities find out. Seo and her friends, Nari and Min, are sentenced to one of the dreaded reeducation camps. Life in the camps is unbelievably brutal, especially with the sadistic Colonel Nam making Seo the special target of his contempt. (“This time the blow knocked her clean off the chair and she lay, gasping, on the floor. She looked up and saw Nam standing motionless over her. ‘I am a tolerant man, Miss Ra, but you are trying my patience’”). But they have an ally in old Mr. Park and in young Iseul, who is almost feral, born in the camp and destined to die there. Relying on Seo’s spirit and Min’s ingenuity, they plan an escape. Allan is a powerful writer: The details hit on a visceral level, and his characters are memorable creations, including the vicious Col. Nam and, especially, Iseul, who has been made almost sub-human (he may remind readers of Gollum from The Lord of the Rings). He even has his own jargon: Guards are “crushers,” “warmly” means very good, and to “snitch” is to tell (“I help you move the dead-dead, you snitch to me about outside. Warmly trade!”). A miasma of deception, surveillance, and secret agendas permeates the story. The characters are never, ever, safe from prison or execution—Seo’s old teacher, Mr. Chi, a blameless and naive true believer, has no idea why he is being hanged. For days, his body sways in the sleet and cold, a gruesome example. But of what, precisely?

A very moving and powerful celebration of courage in the face of inhumanity.