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A review by thepoptimist
The Investigation by Jung-Myung Lee
4.0
A guard is found dead, his lips sewn shut, inside Fukuoka prison during WWII. From there we are launched into a crime thriller as the narrator tries to determine who killed the feared and brutal Dozan Sugiyama, known as The Butcher. There are intrigues aplenty and nothing is as simple as it seems on the surface.
But it’s also about the power of poetry, music, literature and the works of Korean poet Yun Dong-ju whose poems have been posthumously published after he perished inside a Japanese prison. It glimpses at the power of words and language.
At times the prose is a little clunky and can read like a script to an overwrought Korean soap opera. But amidst that are the bits of beauty you read books for, paragraphs that come out of nowhere that just floor you. Individual results may vary.
I kept thinking of Station Eleven, which I recently reread, and the adage “survival is insufficient.”
But it’s also about the power of poetry, music, literature and the works of Korean poet Yun Dong-ju whose poems have been posthumously published after he perished inside a Japanese prison. It glimpses at the power of words and language.
At times the prose is a little clunky and can read like a script to an overwrought Korean soap opera. But amidst that are the bits of beauty you read books for, paragraphs that come out of nowhere that just floor you. Individual results may vary.
I kept thinking of Station Eleven, which I recently reread, and the adage “survival is insufficient.”