The book!

Pointed out to me by the redoubtable James from The Grand Narrative, The University of Hawaii Press has put out a book. The latest title in the Center for Korean Studies book series is Soldiers on the Cultural Front. In this case, the soldiers are literary.

The article describes:

The book examines the 1945-1960 formative period in North Korean literature, a period that saw a gradual transformation from the initial “Soviet era” to a Korean version of “national Stalinism.”

Kind of interesting how that “national” sneaks in there, as it always seems to do with Korean (South or North) literature – the equivalent in the South being the “national literature” (sometimes contrasted to “class literature” in the South, but in a different venue, I would argue that both were clearly national).

Anyway, at $49 it’s a tad expensive for anyone but a literature freak, but it can be had here at Amazon.