Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This first and only study of North Korean literary history by a Western scholar deals with the crucial role played by Han Sorya, chairman of the D.P.R.K. s Federation of Literature and Art from 1948 to his purge in 1962, both in devising the iconography of Kim Il Sung s personality cult and in defining the early course of North Korean letters. Through brief studies of Han's own canonical works the author also sets out to dispel the widely-held assumption that North Korean literature is compatible with Soviet and Chinese socialist realism. The appendix includes a complete translation of Han s 1951 novella Jackals(Sungnyangi)."