The wounded

I picked up this novel after hearing comparisons to the film Burning, curious to see whether the resemblance was real. It turns out that the two works do share something fundamental. In both, reality and dreams dissolve into one another until they become impossible to distinguish, leaving no way to bridge the gap between them. The reader is left to sift through the scattered fragments of reality and fantasy, piecing them together in whatever way feels most convincing.

Yet the two works diverge in one crucial respect. In Burning, the protagonist is only just beginning to write his story. In The Wounded, the story is burned instead. Believing he had finally confronted the source of his long-held suffering, he casts it into the fire—only to discover that he was mistaken. The past returns without warning and shoots me straight through the heart. But how could I ever escape it? Layer upon layer of the past has accumulated to become who I am. A heart once pierced remains pierced.

The Wounded by Yi Cheong-jun

EOD

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