The Liberators

This short and spiky novel spans decades of time, from 1980 to 2014, in both Korea and the west coast of America. Is it a poet's novel? (E.J. Koh is a poet.) Yes, but its beauties can be hard to swallow. It's a what-if story: what if we could flourish outside of history? Or, more particularly, what if these specific characters, four generations of Koreans and Korean Americans, could live without the borders and partitions that their lives have wrapped around, like vines on a trellis? You get glimpses, from Koh's visionary language and their own moments of connection; it's a story whose title is ironic, but not despairingly so.