A New York Times bestseller

BOA’s take: Masaji Ishikawa was born in Japan in 1947 to a Korean father and a Japanese mother. In the late 50’s and early 60’s, Japanese of Korean decent were offered repatriation to Korea. For most, Korea had been a unified country when they left and many dreamed of returning. The new North Korea, however, proved to be exactly what the returnees had not expected. Rich by the standards of North Korea, the previous inhabitants of Japan were stripped of all their belongings soon after arrival and forced to live in poverty. It is this desperate situation that prompts the author to attempt his escape. The way this true story ends is especially profound.

Book Description:

Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.

In this memoir translated from the original Japanese, Ishikawa candidly recounts his tumultuous upbringing and the brutal thirty-six years he spent living under a crushing totalitarian regime, as well as the challenges he faced repatriating to Japan after barely escaping North Korea with his life. A River in Darkness is not only a shocking portrait of life inside the country but a testament to the dignity—and indomitable nature—of the human spirit.