The Investigation
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Fukuoka Prison, Japan, 1944. Beyond the prison walls the war rages; inside a guard is found brutally murdered. A young man is tasked with finding the killer. But as he unravels the victim's final months, he begins to discover what is really going on inside this dark and violent institution, which few inmates survive: a man who will stop at nothing to dig his way to freedom; a governor whose greed knows no limits; a little girl whose kite finds her an unlikely friend. And Yun Dong-ju - the poet whose works hold such beauty they can break the hardest of hearts . . . At once a captivating mystery and an epic lament for freedom, The Investigation - inspired by a true story - is a sweeping, gripping tale about the power of words in the darkest of times . . . 'Extraordinary . . . a heart-wrenching novel with many unexpected twists' Sunday Times 'Lee's story celebrates the power of poetry, of books and of reading, to lend us a "sixth sense" that can heal and transform even in the harshest times . . . this Korean bestseller deserves to fly across our own prison walls' Independent 'A thriller, a war story, and so much more besides . . . an intense, captivating achievement' Matt Haig, bestselling author of The Humans
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A guard is found dead, his lips sewn shut, inside Fukuoka prison during WWII. From there we are launched into a crime thriller as the narrator tries to determine who killed the feared and brutal Dozan Sugiyama, known as The Butcher. There are intrigues aplenty and nothing is as simple as it seems on the surface.
But it's also about the power of poetry, music, literature and the works of Korean poet Yun Dong-ju whose poems have been posthumously published after he perished inside a Japanese prison. It glimpses at the power of words and language.
At times the prose is a little clunky and can read like a script to an overwrought Korean soap opera. But amidst that are the bits of beauty you read books for, paragraphs that come out of nowhere that just floor you. Individual results may vary.
I kept thinking of Station Eleven, which I recently reread, and the adage “survival is insufficient.”
