This barely skims the surface of a deep, troubling story. Thing is, two ministers survived and get involved in the main character's attempts to discover the truth of what really happened.
The novel is really about a group of Christian priests executed by the North and whose deaths are being exploited by the South.
This has little to do with anything, though the Chinese advance to recapture the capital later adds a degree of tension to the novel's final acts. Superficially, it's about the early months of the Korean War when the South made some considerable gains and captured Pyongyang. It's a dogged, spiritual/political crisis set into words, a simple exercise in the vagaries and tumultuous upheavals of human nature writ large. Man, oh man, this is one of those crushingly beautiful novels that just flattens the reader. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. For propaganda purposes, the priests are declared martyrs, but as he delves into the crime, Lee finds himself What if they were not martyrs? What if they renounced their faith in the face of death, failing both God and country? Should the people be fed this lie? Part thriller, part mystery, part existential treatise, The Martyred is a stunning meditation on truth, religion, and faith in times of crisis.įor more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world.
I am deeply moved." -Philip Rothĭuring the early weeks of the Korean War, Captain Lee, a young South Korean officer, is ordered to investigate the kidnapping and mass murder of North Korean ministers by Communist forces. "Written in a mood of total austerity and yet the passion of the book is perpetually beating up against its seemingly barren surface.
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