"Hwang Sok-Yong's photographic memory yields vitally important historic testimonies: to the trials of his imprisonment, to life in South as well as North Korea under unchecked power, to the dynamism, humanity, persistence and resilience of artists alone and together against injustice. The Prisoner is an invaluable document, a thorough and eye-opening sweep of the past. Translators Anton Hur and Sora Kim-Russell have done a remarkable job of conveying the political and emotional nuances of language in their source material, and we as grateful readers are all the better for it."
--Khairani Barokka

"Hwang Sok-yong is Korea's leading political novelist. His new book, The Prisoner, is every bit as riveting and deeply informed is anything he has written. The author has a political sensibility that illuminates a number of important episodes in Korea's recent political history, with one trenchant observation after another about both the North and the South. His harrowing experience as a political prisoner under the South Korean dictatorship leaves an indelible black mark on a regime that the United States supported for 40 years, and that Hwang courageously fought every day of his life until the dictatorship finally collapsed."
--Bruce Cumings, historian at the University of Chicago, and the author of The Korean War: A History

"Epic in its scope ... a passionate, detailed memoir."
--Kristine Morris, Foreword Reviews