The true story of Korean 'comfort women' i.e. Japanese sex slaves undoubtedly deserves to be told but this isn't a particularly accomplished or sophisticated novel. In fact, so keen is it to tell a story, that Hana, a 16 year old girl enslaved by a Japanese military officer, spends more time on the run in Manchuria and Mongolia than in the brothel in which she's placed.

Hana's story is interspersed with that of Emi in the present, her younger sister, now an old woman, uncovering family secrets and searching for a trace of her lost sister.

I'm sorry to sound a bit dismissive: this *is* an important story based on the claims that only came out in 1991 that Korean women were enslaved, raped and forced into prostitution by Japanese occupying forces in the run-up to and during WW2. Of course, this is horrific, of course it needs to be told - but as a novel this feels too simplistic and straightforward.

The author's afterword has a similar naivety about it when it reiterates, again, the platitude that we need to remember history to stop us repeating it - but, as she well knows, women continue to be raped during conflicts in, for example, Rwanda, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Syria, Iraq (even as I write this).

So yes, an important, story, but rather disappointing as a novel.