This novel didn't work for me as a piece of writing, but I did find it really intriguing to glimpse into a society that is so closed off to the international community. I would hand-sell to readers looking for something quite different.

I was interested in reading this book as it was written by someone living in North Korea and the novel was not only popular among the community, but also endorsed by the State. A lot of books available to Anglophone readers that have to do with the region have been penned by dissidents. As such, I appreciated the gleanings of societal values around marriage and family that may be prized by community and state. As someone who is not so familiar with the nuances, it was interesting to ponder where, if at all, the author was able or inclined to take liberties. The afterword was insightful and added much appreciated context to my experience of the book. I was left keen to explore further interviews and ephemera discussing the book after I was done reading it.

Essentially this is a book about marriage - both good and bad, and the effect that this can have on both adults and children.

But it is more than just this. In the excellent "afterword" we learn that the author is state-sanctioned. That the book is written in North Korea for North Koreans - not by dissidents or defectors. We also learn about North Korean literature.

Within these pages I found myself dragged into and engrossed in the story. This is not something we read very often. It is a view of North Korea and how things operate there - the judicial system, ordinary people and daily life.

An engrossing and enlightening read.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for sending me this ARC. These opinions are my own.

See a June 20, 2020, online “in-store appearance” by translator Immanuel Kim at the website of Washington, D.C., bookstore “Politics & Prose” here,

https://www.politics-prose.com/video/paek-nam-nyongs-friend-immanuel-kim

or at P&P's YouTube channel here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHspcgSuJfs

I found it interesting.

I watched this event stream live. At one point in the proceedings, Kim gives a shout-out to the support he got from publisher Columbia University Press in the preparation of this book. I said to myself, “Hmm, Columbia University Press is one of those generous establishments who gives reviewers free electronic advance copies via Netgalley.” I navigated over there and scored a free copy. Thanks to all.

If you don't watch the author appearance linked to above, I recommended that you start reading this book with the translator afterword. It gives helpful context. Readers of this Goodreads page probably know already that this is possibly the first state-approved novel from the Hermit Kingdom to be translated and published in English. The afterward fills in additional detail that I found helpful to keep in mind while reading, e.g., at the time, the officially-approved literature was moving away from heroic manual laborers toward heroes who improve themselves through education.

Remember, this novel was published in North Korea in 1988. At that time, the Soviet Union's generous subsidies had just been reduced, and the subsequent economic hardships were not yet being rippled through the economy, so life was comparatively prosperous and normal. Since them, there were (and are) Western sanctions against the regime. Life's probably much harder now.

Even if life was easier for North Korean then compared to now, sometimes the mask of normalcy that the novel attempts to portray slips a little and you get an idea about how different (meaning, lower) the quality of life was. For example, early on in the novel, some characters attend a evening concert. When the concert is over, people leave the concert hall and reach for the flashlights they have in the purses or overcoats – because of course the street lights are few and far between. Later on in the book, the female protagonist (who is a singing celebrity in North Korea) decides to do some laundry and – instead of using a washing machine, or even handwashing in the sink – has to go down to this nearby river and stand in the freezing water to launder her family's clothes. No one, including the author, remarks on this or considers it in the least bit odd.

You can tell a man wrote this. Each of the two families who are at the center of this novel, the man selflessly takes on the tasks of cleaning and child-rearing while the wife thoughtlessly goes off to concentrate on her career. This state of affairs occurs in real life, I guess, but certainly not as frequently as it does in novels written by men – whether they write in North Korea or not.

Similarly, it is briefly mentioned that, in one of the two families, the husband has on occasion verbally and physically abused the wife, but it's treated like no big deal.

There's also some obligatory stuff about how wonderful and wise the party's leadership is, but it's pretty easy to skim through these parts. Also, a Communist Party apparatchik is caught red-handed stealing, and immediately breaks down to the investigator and repents, which is completely laughable. In real life, the apparatchik would have sent a message to the investigator by having the investigator's school-aged child beaten within an inch of his life. These guys don't get their positions by being push-overs.

Still, I enjoyed reading this, because it's a little window, no matter how foggy, onto a place which we can't really know otherwise. Also, it's a good easy read, a tribute to both the original author and the translator. Worth a look.

#Friend is by Author #Paek Nam-nyong, and Translated by #Immanuel Kim. This is a nonfiction debut of one China’s most highly respected writers.This is a vivid portrait of rural China in the 1960s and 70s chronicling his childhood and festival days. A career in the Army allows him to escape village life. And the reader experiences more of the cultural revolution.
Thank you,
#Netgalley, #Paek Nam-nyong and #Grove Atlantic

Characters felt two dimensional. Written in a formal style with the characters seemingly childlike and their actions are often puzzling. The book was enlightening in showing how North Korean people regard their country and its ideals. The story allows an insight into a North Korea that is not shown in documentaries or news broadcasts. An interesting read. The publishing of this book feels dangerous, like it's making us ignore all the horrible stuff that's going on in North Korea. It's obviously propaganda within North Korea but also the purpose of being published is also interesting.

I received this free copy in exchange for an honest review here on Netgalley.

This was a very hard to book to complete for me. Maybe it was because of the cultural clash, maybe because my views are too western to be reflected in what the story was about but overall i felt quite disconnected despite me actively trying to understand and comprehend the background of it all.

I received a complementary copy of this book from the publisher and Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Friend, written by Paek Nam-Nyong and translated by Immanuel Kim, weaves a state-sanctioned psychological tale of marital discordance, divorce and domestic abuse, and its impact on societal makeup and children. The text is more telling of human nature and relationships more than any book I've read this year - whilst the text is very openly North Korean (and is set within an idealised, Socialist state), it is extremely revealing of some of our most baseline desires. Through this text, Nam-Nyong constructs strong, realistic characters with powerful dialogues and internal monologues, whilst emphasising the strength of the North Korean State.

Overall, this novel is heart-wrenching and politically informative. Would highly recommend.

Thank you netgalley for giving me an arc in exchange for an honest review.

The significance of Friend can be summed up from a section of the afterword:

"Friend is unique in the Anglophone publishing landscape in that it is a state-sanctioned novel, written in Korea for North Koreans, by an author in good standing with the regime."

At it's core this book is a psychological domestic drama, but the propaganda within it (loyalty to the state, hard work for the common good etc.), is heavy-handed. But I found the inside look into the lives of a divorce lawyer and the family seeking a divorce to be incredibly interesting. Paek Nam Nyong explores the idea of what marriage means, what people owe themselves when it comes to their own happiness, and how to be a friend.

Overall, I found this book to be extremely engaging and informative.

This is my first experience with North Korean literature. As a translator, I was mesmerized by how fine and sentimental the translation is and kept thinking how good could the original text be for the translation to be that beautiful!
The novel talks about a couple going through a divorce and how the progress of one of them affected their life. The writer described the development of the couple's relationship in a delicate way. He also talked about other relationships briefly. However, at some point, I started to feel the North Korean ideologies taking over. In fact I was not surprised as I read the translator's interview with the writer in 2016. Park Nam Nyong is a bit committed to the idea of citizenship and the society. He kind of idolizes the leadership and writes to promote their principles. You could feel the Judge was his representation of a model citizen who must serve his country and people.
The first part and how delicate and sentimental his description of relationships is made me think of giving it 5 stars, but the rest of the novel reduced my rating to 3. I liked it.

I’m judging a 2020 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

Really interesting discourse taking place here, a quiet domestic novel that takes place in North Korea. I don't think I've read anything like it. It's political and feminist in its subtle invasiveness.
I wonder what, if anything is lost in translation, you can tell by the language that perhaps the original intention of the sentences were perhaps more lyrical that depicted here. Either way, I'm excited by this narrative, the political work that is being done, is within a marriage, where much of our most intimate conflicts occur.

'Friend' was a very interesting and insightful reading experience, especially since I don't know much about North Korea and we don't see many books talking about the experiences there. I wasn't aware this book was written in 1988 until I started reading it, which makes the reading experience even more fascinating. But I do feel like you have to take everything in this book with a grain of salt, because of the place where it takes place and the political regime practiced there. Still, I really recommend it because it really makes you reflect and think about your own views and beliefs.

'Friend' is a very strange book, quite unlike any other I have read.

Perhaps that's to be expected. I've never read a North Korean, government-approved, sort-of love story before so not surprisingly it's strange. I have read a LOT of books by North Koreans who have escaped their country but no novels and no books that were widely read and loved by native North Koreans. The book was released in the late 1980s as an example to locals about how they should behave in their marriages and is - apparently - still very popular today. The timing means it predates the North Korean famine of the 1990s and so lacks the usual fixation on starvation and finding food that's characteristic of later dissident novels. In this time, there's still plenty of food to go around. Also, there's not one signal mention of the Kims - the Supreme Leader or his son the Dear Leader do not put in an appearance at all.

There's a lot of pontificating and criticising people for their behaviour and their attitudes (something widely reported in dissident accounts of N. Korea) and lots of wholesome advice about putting the good of others - your family, your factory, your community and of course your country ahead of your own needs. I felt I was being preached at, but I wasn't always clear what the key messages were.

A judge receives a visit from an attractive young woman who wants a divorce and, rather than just process the request, he takes it on himself to investigate the marriage, get to know the couple and their young son, and basically interfere way too much in their relationship. The couple had a love marriage (not always the case in Korea) as did the judge. His own marriage isn't easy; his wife is an agricultural scientist who spends most of her time away in the mountains with her vegetable plants, leaving him to look after himself and her seedlings. At times you wonder what right this man has to judge others when his own affairs are so complicated. He tracks the woman's husband to his factory to learn more about him. On one occasion, he takes their son to his home after finding him outside the family home, cold and wet. I couldn't help thinking in today's Europe you'd probably get locked up for abducting a child and giving him a bath without any consent from his parents. At one point the judge goes to a river, wades in and fills his backpack with sand for the boy's father - seriously weird behaviour.

The wife has risen above her humble origins to become a singer and rather looks down on her factory-worker husband, even though the guy is a genius at inventing clever machines. She gets criticised for her haughtiness and superiority. He gets criticised for his obsession with engineering and for refusing to better himself through education. Basically everybody gets criticised a lot and regardless of whether they are too humble or too haughty, the judge has some cutting character assassination to dish out. All the while, he thinks he's doing what a 'friend' should do.

The messages are very odd and very complex. I can't really say that by the end I really understood whether the judge had done good or not, but I saw clearly that it was exceedingly hard in 1980s North Korea to ever get anything right.

It's well worth a read for its strangeness and otherworldliness. But I'm not entirely sure I could say that I 'enjoyed' it. I feel like I went on an interesting literary journey and experienced something worthwhile but I'm not sure I'd choose to do it again.

Oh, dear! I'm not surprised that Faith Martin chose to use a pen name for 'An Oxford Revenge'. I can't imagine it did anything positive for her reputation as a writer of mysteries and whodunits.

Davina is a beautiful and passionate woman, allegedly so good at poetry that she is introduced to the staff and students at St Bede's College, Oxford as "recently ....shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for Literature". Let'stake a moment to consider the ridiculousness of that, shall we? The Nobel Prize is given for an author's life work. The youngest writer ever to get the prize was Rudyard Kipling in his 40s and most winners are decades older. So what? Well, it sets the scene for just how silly this book is likely to get.

As I was saying, famous feminist poet, Davina has finagled her way into a one-term post at St Bede's, the college where her younger step-brother David was so unhappy that he killed himself, pinning the blame on his English tutor, Gareth Lacey. Davina's mission is to destroy the man who destroyed her step-brother but she hasn't factored in that Lacey is basically sex-on-legs - a sort of intellectual Poldark who turns her brains to jelly and her innards to water. Despite wanting revenge and plotting to destroy him, she's out of her undies quicker than you can say "Excuse me". Now, I'm not unwilling to believe in animal magnetism and fierce attraction, but this requires a degree of suspended belief that goes well beyond my capabilities.

"The hot moistness between her legs felt like fire. Her nipples, pressed against his dark blue jacket, suddenly stiffened with sensitivity, growing harder with every minute movement he made".

Seriously, pass me the application for the Bad Sex Awards. It's all horribly squelchy and completely ignores that she's supposed to hate him. And even when she's 'in love', it doesn't stop her carrying out her fiendish plans for revenge.

There is a nicer, gentler love story running in parallel between some students who are putting on a play. That's less squelchy but still requires you to take on a Jane Austen-like plotline about stately homes and inheritance scams.

I guess my second biggest question would be "Where's the mystery?" and my biggest question "WHY did you do it Faith?"

I received a free ARC from Netgalley in return for an honest review.

I received an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review

What a weird wonderful little book. Hardly comfort in reading, but enjoyable for it’s own sake. . I’m grateful to NetGalley for exposing this little pebble of a novel to me.

“Many people in the city neither knew the location of the Superior Court nor knew of its existence. Those who aided by the law or lived in a harmonious family had no reason to come here.”

Judge Jeong Jin Wu is presented with a divorce petition, and he’s “upset with having to deal with another family’s misery.” He’s in the wrong business then, because he’s seeing divorce cases, and that includes a lot of misery. But hey, wasn’t that why divorce was invented: so that spouses (mostly men) couldn’t have their unwanted mates locked up in loony bins, dungeons or murdered? So IMO divorce may not be the worst option out there.

Friend

33-year-old Chae Sun Hee is petitioning for a divorce. She’s a celebrity, a professional singer, the lead mezzo-soprano for the Provincial Performing Arts Company. She’s been married for almost ten years and has one son with her husband, 35-year-old Lee Soek Chun, who is 35 and works in a factory as a lathe operator. Now of course because I live in America, I see the reason for the divorce right there: it’s The Custom of the Country. You move up.

But this is North Korea in the 80s, so Chae Sun Hee must explain to the judge why she wants a divorce. Her reasons are vague; she states that she “can’t live like this anymore,” and that their “personalities are completely different.” According to Chae Sun Hee, it’s a “loveless marriage” loaded with “silent treatment” and nagging, but then comes something else, the biggie: “it’s embarrassing to be seen in public with him.”

After Chae Sun Hee leaves, the judge receives a strange phone call from Chae Rim, a chairman from the Provincial Industrial Technology Commission Board. He urges the judge to grant Chae Sun Hee her divorce and at first the judge is (naively) puzzled as to why this man would interfere. But then he recalls that Chae Rim divorced his wife, and what a shameful affair that was. The wife, who’d slaved pitifully for her husband as he moved up in the world, was a “country bumpkin.” It was a case that the judge never forgot.

Jeong Jin Wu was still bitter about that incident and felt that the divorce litigation should be dismissed. He wanted to punish Chae Rim for his violent and insolent personality, but he knew that the court would not approve of sentencing someone based on personality.

The judge begins to do some background research on the divorce case which includes visiting the -not-so-happy home, and he ends up bringing the couple’s child home. Here we see the judge’s own compromised marriage. The judge and his wife lead separate lives, and although there’s no disparity of social position between them, they share very little and have grown apart.

Written in a simple, unadorned style, this was an interesting, rather sad read; there was so much here that was familiar–husbands and wives getting sick of each another, the suffering of the children of divorce, and then so much that was.. well North Korean. The very specific divorce case morphs into considerations of love and marriage in general. Human nature doesn’t change but the laws of the land shape behavior, and we see that here, along with the power and, paradoxically, the powerlessness of a judge.

Review copy

Translated by Immanuel Kim

It is easy to forget, or perhaps not even think about in the first place, that North Korea produces fiction for its citizens just as any other country does, and that North Koreans enjoy novels and other fiction just as readers elsewhere do. As I understand it, fiction was almost wholly propagandistic in the past but recently constraints have relaxed and a more recognisable, according to western standards, fiction has been allowed, and this novel Friend is one such. It was a best-seller when it was published in 1988 and remains popular, so much so that it has been adapted for a television series. However North Korean literature for internal consumption is not normally made available outside the country, which makes this new translation into English even more exciting. Four years after its original publication it was republished in South Korea, and then translated into French in 2011. And now we have an English translation, the first time a state-approved novel has been available in the US. Even with the relaxations North Korean literature still has a role to play in propaganda for the people, and that’s not completely missing here, but it doesn’t dominate the narrative or make it any less readable.
It’s the story of a conscientious and well-meaning judge, the friend of the title, Jeong Jin-wu, whose role doesn’t see him confined to the courtroom but also finds him acting as a sort of counsellor or social worker. One day a young woman, Chae Sun-hee, a professional singer, comes to him to ask for a divorce. Rather than just apply the law and grant her what she wants, Jeong Jin-wu feels it incumbent on himself to look into the family’s circumstances to judge whether a divorce is in the family’s best interest, especially as there is a child involved. As he investigates, the reader is given a picture of North Korean society, the personal struggles of the people, their daily life, the problems and dilemmas they face, and how they sometimes fail to live up to the expectations of their family, their community or indeed their country. Issues of domestic conflict, the role of men and women in the home and the workplace, female ambition, career versus domestic roles, the responsibility for bringing up children, pressures of the work-place – all these issues are examined with empathy and insight and with a remarkable lack of didacticism and preaching the party line. At its heart this is very much about the institution and the sanctity of marriage, a cautionary tale about the damage divorce can do to children. We also meet a number of secondary characters who demonstrate other facets of North Korean society, and surprisingly the novel doesn’t flinch from exposing some of the fault lines in the country, such as the shortage of electricity, the prevalence of corruption and even embezzlement. All in all I found this a fascinating novel, a rare glimpse into everyday North Korean society and a timely reminder that people are people everywhere, regardless of the type of government they have.
This is essential reading for anyone interested in North Korea, but it also stands up as an enjoyable novel quite apart from any special interest in or prior knowledge of the country and its society.

Thank you to Columbia University Press and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read Immanuel Kim's masterful translation of Paek Nam-nyong's Friend. I wasn't sure what to expect when I requested this title, but I must admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it. I flipped to the end and read the afterword before the story, and found it was truly helpful for contextualizing purposes. I found it a bit hard to get into at the start because the text was somewhat flowery. From the onset, the reader must acknowledge that it is an idealistic story. It was written not only to entertain but to help individuals acquire a "correct" political consciousness. If one adopts this lens, the book is much more meaningful. Overall, I believe that reading Friend opened my eyes to another side of North Korea which those outside the West will never learn about from conventional news sources. It truly humanizes the average person. I would encourage those with an interest in the country and who are open to trying something new to spend some time with this book. Read it with an open mind!

A fascinating look into a couple's life and marriage. I love reading books written from another country because it gives me a chance to discover author's I normally would not read. Well written story with strong characters it's a story that you will enjoy. Happy reading!

E-ARC received via Net Galley in exchange for an honest review :)

I really enjoyed this book. It read as literary fiction and followed a married couple seeking a divorce and the judge presiding over their case. We also caught little snapshots of other peoples lives and relationships as they interacted with the three main protagonists.
What makes this book so interesting and unique is its normalcy - which sounds weird but let me explain. Most of the literature I've seen in English from North Korea is on the axis of extreme - from western propaganda to dissentients' stories of violence. This story isn't near either of those extremes, its a beautifully written fiction about relationship problems and within that story it presents a picture of daily life for a regular family with the backdrop of living in North Korea.
Not only did I enjoy reading this book but I learnt a lot and it really made me confront a lot of my assumptions about North Korea based on western media depictions.
The afterword of the book is particularly insightful also and explains how literature is produced in North Korea and then about the author and how this work was translated which was super interesting.
I would recommend this book to people who like literary fiction and contemporaries revolving around family units, I really recommend this book to people who don't know much about North Korea and are looking to learn something that might challenge their assumptions. I hope more of Paek Nam-Nyong's work, and other North Korean novels are translated into English.

A woman in her thirties goes to the courthouse to file for a divorce, She meets an eccentric judge who investigates her case. Paek examines love, marriage and divorce in North Korea in the 198s through . the lives of the main couple as well as the Judge who is also undergoing his fair share of marital problems. Through a series of flashbacks, monologues and various media, the author examines how a couple gets together, how marriages deteriorate and possible ways to remedy the situation.

Friend is written within the broader political context of the North Korean nation which largely viewed one's public life as a reflection of their private life. It was interesting to note that everybody in society (work colleagues and supervisors) had a say in an institution that was primarily supposed to be between two people. The author does a commendable job in addressing the inner struggles of the characters in the marital context as well as a part of society. Readers will appreciate the afterword in the book that provides insightful information about life in North Korea.

Though first published in 1988, Friend provides a glimpse into the married lives of everyday North Koreans and is a great conversation starter.