The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost (Weatherhead Books on Asia)

Book info: The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost (Weatherhead Books on Asia) (Hardcover, 144 pages) – Columbia University Press, 2010. Language: English.

The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost incorporates Korean folk tales, ghost stories, and myth into a phenomenal depiction of epic tragedy. Written by a zainichi, a permanent resident of Japan who is not of Japanese ancestry, the novel tells the story of Mandogi, a young priest living on the island of Cheju-do. Mandogi becomes unwittingly involved in the Four-Three Incident of 1948, in which the South Korean government brutally suppressed an armed peasant uprising and purged Cheju-do of communist sympathizers. Although Mandogi is sentenced to death for his part in the riot, he survives (in a sense) to take revenge on his enemies and fully commit himself to the resistance. Mandogi's indeterminate, shapeshifting character is emblematic of Japanese colonialism's outsized impact on both ruler and ruled. A central work of postwar Japanese fiction, The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost relates the trauma of a long-forgotten history and its indelible imprint on Japanese and Korean memory. Editorial Reviews About the Author Cindi Textor (University of Washington PhD) is Assistant Professor of World Languages and
Cultures at Utah and translator of The Curious Tale of Mandogi's Ghost (CUP 2010). She has articles forthcoming in in positions: asia critique and one
in the Journal of Korean Studies―and a chapter titled “Zainichi Writers and the Postcoloniality
of Modern Korean Literature” in the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean
Literature.