Publishers Weekly
★ 09/18/2023
The moving and lyrical debut novel from memoirist Koh (The Magical Language of Others) follows an unhappy South Korean couple who emigrates to the U.S. In the wake of the military government’s violent 1980 crackdown on protestors, Insuk is arranged to be married to Sungho by her father, Yohan, on advice he believes he’s received from the spirit of Insuk’s late mother, who died when Insuk was little. By the time Insuk becomes pregnant in 1983, Sungho has begun cheating on her. Unnerved by the rampant kidnapping and torture perpetrated by the military dictatorship and low on options, the couple moves to San Jose, Calif., where their son, Henry, is born. When Henry is five, Sungho takes him to the Chinese Korean restaurant where she waits tables. In Henry’s view, the husband-and-wife team who run the restaurant lord over their staff “like a boa constrictor.” After Insuk has a miscarriage, she begins an affair with a man named Robert, stirred by his commitment to Korean reunification. Koh weaves together the narrative in short, bracing chapters from various characters’ perspectives both in the U.S. and back in Korea. A tragic, Kafkaesque episode involving Yohan is told from a Korean prison guard’s point of view, and it gives greater weight to the story’s intergenerational trauma, familial grief, and political consciousness. Koh has fully harnessed her potential in this assured outing. Agent: Kate McKean, Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. (Nov.)
Poets & Writers
"Breaks new ground in understanding the Korean diaspora and the emancipating power of love."
Seattle Magazine
"Known for her poetic language, Koh is a master at weaving stories together, drawing tales of history and contemporary experiences into conversation to help us better understand who we are as humans."
The Hudson Review
"Riveting. . . . seamlessly blends the personal with the political."
Krys Lee
"The Liberators is a poetic breath, the language as haunting and epic as its story of a divided country's legacy and impact on the Korean diaspora. I'll read anything that E. J. Koh writes."
Ed Park
"A piercing, patient debut by one of our finest chroniclers of American han. You won't know what hit you until the final, perfect image."
Jimin Han
"E. J. Koh brings her elegant poet's hand to this intimate and expansive mythic novel of four generations of a family suffering sudden absences and war, seeking love and connection, weighted with the complexities of no easy answers. I didn't want this book to end."
Starred Review Book Page
"Another resounding triumph for E.J. Koh: a brave exploration of the complexities of the human experience and the impossible task of making peace with the past."
The Los Angeles Times
"Lyrical. . . . Kaleidoscopic. . . . explores how the past travels with us, and how we may find solace amid loss through relationships with others."
Crystal Hana Kim
"An elegiac, ferocious, and deeply stirring novel. E. J. Koh melds image and story together precisely, holding up to light the history and making of Korea. I loved The Liberators not only for what it shows us about our world, but moreso, ourselves."
Seattle Times
"Beautiful. . . . it captures the very real whiplash of experience and emotion that comes with being human."
Adroit Journal
"A poetic portrayal of the Korean diaspora in the U.S.. . . .The Liberators marks Koh as possibly the greatest chronicler of American han and as one of the most promising writers today as someone that has exhibited mastery across several genres."
Shawn Wong
"As readers of E. J. Koh's The Liberators we're asked to occupy the boundaries of a divided country, the world of two colonizers, and a family's eventual journey to America where the demarcation lines shift to the palm of one's hand, in the heart and life lines, where the words for love and survival are spelled out in the hand, where Koh's lyrical narrative hand is held over our hearts in undying allegiance"
Alta
"Weaves personal narratives with historical events for a captivating, moving result."
Booklist
"Koh produces another Intricately accomplished, intimate melding of history and storytelling."
Bookbrowse
"A pleasure. . . . Koh’s writing has a natural elegance. . . . She cleverly and aptly captures a character's essence with minimal description."
Tayari Jones
"Spare, beautiful and richly layered, The Liberators is dazzling."
Paul Lisicky
"E. J. Koh’s The Liberators is a sublime achievement for its deft political and emotional intelligence, its fine-tuned grasp of how a divided country divides lives through the generations. As in all great works of art, it uses the earthbound to transport us to a realm that feels like it’s been unperceived until now. As readers, we enter a theater of raw perception. A tree falls out of nowhere, a boar walks into a room unannounced, shadows shatter across a ceiling. Illumination can happen at any turn, reminding us that there’s always more world than we've had the capacity to see."
A Best Book of Fall San Francisco Chronicle
"As always, Koh’s singular grasp of language results in achingly beautiful writing."
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
"E. J. Koh's poetic voice lends itself beautifully to the aching slowness of the search for healing. This book is about intergenerational trauma but it is also a celebration of intergenerational hope. Koh tackles history and sorrow with a delicate hand."
starred review Foreward
"A soaring multigenerational saga about learning to accept the past without letting it overshadow the future."
Lit Hub
"Kaleidoscopic. . . . exquisite. . . . A family saga which manages to infuse the historical with the mythic, blend the epic with the intimate. . . . extraordinary."
Matthew Salesses
"E. J. Koh brings a poet’s eye and sensibility to this remarkable novel. Here you will find characters and sentences that will leave you gasping for more. The Liberators captures grief and paranoia and a legacy of colonialism and violence with beauty and measure and grace."
Joseph Han
"The beauty, intensity, and breadth of E. J. Koh’s work continues to transcend to new levels. Her language is transformative, making history more alive than we can feel and understand alone. Here is a chorus of lives and a song of peace. With The Liberators, Koh cements her place as one of the greatest Korean American writers of our time."
A Most Anticipated Fiction Book of Fall 2023 Book Page
"An epic saga."
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 Lit Hub
"E.J. Koh always operates with a kind of alchemy; what she touches turns to gold."
Library Journal
11/01/2023
DEBUT Award-winning poet and memoirist Koh (The Magical Language of Others) makes her fiction debut with a story about a young couple in their early 20s, Sungho and Insuk, who are in an arranged marriage and emigrate from South Korea to San Jose, California, in the 1980s. Their story continues through 2014 with tales of Insuk's life as a working mother, the growing dissension between her and her mother-in-law, and the struggles in her marriage. Koh also adds the voice of the couple's son Henry to the mix and details his experiences. The novel looks at assimilation in a new country and advancement in life and society and touches upon the politics of thought between North and South Koreans. Readers who find satisfaction in deep and emotionally drawn characterizations and storylines will not find it here. Instead, they will savor a richly multilayered tale presenting snippets of the lives and stories behind these characters while simultaneously exploring immigrant and Asian American experiences. VERDICT Koh's work should resonate strongly, with its focus on the desire of wanting to be seen and to belong, regardless of the histories that shape the individual.—Shirley Quan
FEBRUARY 2024 - AudioFile
Four narrators work together in this multigenerational story of migration, love, and loss. Janet Song, Intae Kim, Greta Jung, and Raymond J. Lee create balance to this lyrical story set amid the making of the two Koreas. They bring to life the struggles of Insuk and her turbulent romance and then marriage to Sungho. The female and male narrators trade a wide variety of perspectives, including Insuk's and Sungho's, at various key historical moments. Listeners might find this slightly disorienting as the main story, taking place in the U.S, is mixed in with vignettes happening on the Korean peninsula. In these moments, Greta Jung's voice serves as an anchor, filling in Insuk's tumultuous life with heartfelt drama and empathy. M.R. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-08-26
A multigenerational novel centered on a Korean woman who flees the South Korean dictatorship and immigrates to California in 1983.
The novel opens with a death and a marriage. Soon after her father is killed under the military dictatorship in South Korea, Insuk marries Sungho, a boy in her year at school. Sungho moves to San Jose not long after, leaving Insuk—now pregnant with a boy, Henry—behind with his difficult mother, Huran. A year later, Sungho sends for Insuk and Huran, and the whole family relocates to California. Insuk struggles with a difficult transition and befriends Robert, a Korean activist advocating for the reunification of North and South Korea. Snatches of conversation and throwback segments strewn throughout the novel impart snippets of modern Korean history, including the 1945 sinking of the Ukishima Maru, a passenger ship that exploded during a trip that was supposed to repatriate thousands of Koreans from Japan at the end of World War II; the 1980 Gwangju Massacre, which followed widespread protests after the South Korean general Chun Doo-hwan assumed power and imposed martial law and the 1988 Seoul Olympics, when doves symbolically released for peace were burned alive by the Olympic cauldron. As the novel unfolds, the reader encounters various stakeholders' perspectives conveying what it felt like to live through these events. Quiet attention is paid throughout to the role of American imperialism in modern Korean history and the violence it has wreaked, but the novel's pedagogical elements never tip it into didacticism. Koh’s poetic prose delights with surprising metaphors and a cast of skillfully rendered characters.
A mesmerizing, delicately crafted novel about survival in the wake of civil war and transpacific imperialism.
