I’ve posted a review of Hwang Sok-yong’s novel Princess Bari over on Vulpes Libris: magical realism, forest survival, spirit voices, starvation, reflexology, snakehead extortion, refugee survival, the long arm of the law circumvented by smiling faces and deft disappearances, the floating, shifting population of London’s migrant communities and the silent snowy Chinese hillsides where Bari is taught to forage, and where she loses the last of her family. An absorbing and thoughtful novel of sadnesses and perpetual hope.
Kate Macdonald 