Scan barcode
A review by ohsoreads
The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee
4.0
“Walls of books protected us from the ominous news of the war. Nothing could filter in through the hundreds of thousands of pages; not brawling of merchants or the clomping of marching soldiers or the cold of the winter night. The books protected me from the era’s rebellions and from my anxiety about the future.”
The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee is a crime novel inspired by true events. It features a crime that takes place in Fukuoka Prison, 1944. Watanabe Yuichi, a student-soldier with a passion for reading was made a censor officer – one who scans through letters and postcards that go in and out of the prison. A man had been brutally murdered and he sets off to investigate the crime that happened. Watanabe digs deep into the case and uncovers what lies within the walls of this dreadful prison. He realised that he must protect Yun Dong-Ju, a Korean Poet, who has seen all that went down and insists on revealing the horrid truth.
"It was a desperate confession. What had he lost? Sugiyama knew Dong-Ju had lost everything – his country, his language, his name. Had he known long ago that he would be imprisoned, that he would be incarcerated on the other side of the wall?"
This has been truly engrossing – a crime novel with a storyline that I have never encountered! A murder taking place in a high-security prison paired with unforgettable and impossible friendships. I thoroughly enjoyed the references to books and the comfort of reading via Watanabe who was a bookworm. Who would have thought that whilst prisoners were stuck in a hellhole that they would seek books and storytelling as an escape, a coping mechanism? I highly recommend this novel if you are one who love book references and is in for an emotional ride with Watanabe Yuichi and Yun Dong-Ju. This crime novel is important and I quote from the book, "Sometimes fiction can reveal more truth than the bare facts."
Below I include excerpts from the book:
"Even a blank piece of paper tells the reader something about the person who chose not to write."
"Universes were organized on the shelves according to my will. I exerted absolute control according to my own order and rules, putting Tolstoy's essays on the same shelf as Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment and a yellowed copy of Othello next to King Lear.
Soon I could guess the age of a book just by its scent and understand a book's core from a quick glance at the table of contents, like a farmer who could tell the maturity and sweetness of a fruit from just its colour and the texture of its skin."
"Language is a person's signature, like his fingerprints. It contains his birth and growth, memories and past."
The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee is a crime novel inspired by true events. It features a crime that takes place in Fukuoka Prison, 1944. Watanabe Yuichi, a student-soldier with a passion for reading was made a censor officer – one who scans through letters and postcards that go in and out of the prison. A man had been brutally murdered and he sets off to investigate the crime that happened. Watanabe digs deep into the case and uncovers what lies within the walls of this dreadful prison. He realised that he must protect Yun Dong-Ju, a Korean Poet, who has seen all that went down and insists on revealing the horrid truth.
"It was a desperate confession. What had he lost? Sugiyama knew Dong-Ju had lost everything – his country, his language, his name. Had he known long ago that he would be imprisoned, that he would be incarcerated on the other side of the wall?"
This has been truly engrossing – a crime novel with a storyline that I have never encountered! A murder taking place in a high-security prison paired with unforgettable and impossible friendships. I thoroughly enjoyed the references to books and the comfort of reading via Watanabe who was a bookworm. Who would have thought that whilst prisoners were stuck in a hellhole that they would seek books and storytelling as an escape, a coping mechanism? I highly recommend this novel if you are one who love book references and is in for an emotional ride with Watanabe Yuichi and Yun Dong-Ju. This crime novel is important and I quote from the book, "Sometimes fiction can reveal more truth than the bare facts."
Below I include excerpts from the book:
"Even a blank piece of paper tells the reader something about the person who chose not to write."
"Universes were organized on the shelves according to my will. I exerted absolute control according to my own order and rules, putting Tolstoy's essays on the same shelf as Dostoyevsky's Crime And Punishment and a yellowed copy of Othello next to King Lear.
Soon I could guess the age of a book just by its scent and understand a book's core from a quick glance at the table of contents, like a farmer who could tell the maturity and sweetness of a fruit from just its colour and the texture of its skin."
"Language is a person's signature, like his fingerprints. It contains his birth and growth, memories and past."