"El huésped"

Por Hwang Sok-Yong.

Ediciones del Ermitaño, Collection of Korean Literature, 2008.

The present novel is about the 1950 massacre in Sinchon, North Korea. It is called “The Guest” a word used to call the smallpox in the Korean tradition, but it also refers to the people without roots, which must become independent and find a sense of pertenence. The protagonist is a reverend who lives in Brooklyn, in the United States and after many years he returns to its mother country in North Korea, to visit his native town, in a journey towards spiritual redemption and final liberation of his sufferings.