About This Book

The novel deals with the story of real-life lovers, both anarchists during the turbulent early 20th century during the height of Japan's colonialism and expansion.

Park Yeol (1902-1974), a Korean anarchist and an independence fighter, and his Japanese lover Fumiko Kaneko (1903-1926), an anarchist and nihilist, immediately realize they are destined to be one in both anarchism and love. As a Korean in Japan at that time, Park is an outsider and Kaneko, who grew up as an unregistered child in patriarchal Japanese society, is also an outsider as she wanders from one home to another in search of a real family.

The novel weaves together their meeting at an odeng bar frequented by socialists in 1920s Tokyo, how the failed plan of their anarchist group to bomb the emperor leads to their capture and their resistance to Japanese authorities.

The author, in a recent interview with The Hankook Ilbo, said the book is "paying respect to the passionate lives of the two, who were most loyal to Nietzsche's command to 'be faithful to oneself."'

-- Kim Ji-soo, www.koreatimes.co.kr


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