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The Liberators Audiobook
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Winner of the 2024 NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award
Finalist for the 2024 Washington State Book Award and the 2025 PNBA Book Award
“Spare, beautiful and richly layered, The Liberators is dazzling.”
―Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
“A piercing, patient debut by one of our finest chroniclers of American han. You won't know what hit you until the final, perfect image.”
―Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams
Daejeon, South Korea. 1980. At twenty-four, Insuk falls in love with her college classmate, Sungho, and with her father’s blessing, they marry. But then, as the military dictatorship, martial law, and nationwide protests bring the country precariously to the edge, Insuk’s father disappears.
In the wake of his disappearance, Insuk flees to California with Sungho, their son Henry, and Sungho’s overbearing mother. Adrift in a new country, Insuk grieves the loss of her past and divided homeland, only to find herself drawn into an illicit affair that sets into motion dramatic events that will echo for generations to come.
Spanning two continents and four generations, E. J. Koh’s debut novel exquisitely captures two Korean families forever changed by fateful decisions made in love and war. Extraordinarily beautiful and deeply moving, The Liberators is an elegantly wrought family saga of memory, trauma, and empathy, and a stunning testament to the consequences and fortunes of inheritance.
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"E. J. Koh’s The Liberators is a sublime achievement for its deft political and emotional intelligence, its fine-tuned grasp of how a divided country divides lives through the generations. As in all great works of art, it uses the earthbound to transport us to a realm that feels like it’s been unperceived until now. As readers, we enter a theater of raw perception. A tree falls out of nowhere, a boar walks into a room unannounced, shadows shatter across a ceiling. Illumination can happen at any turn, reminding us that there’s always more world than we've had the capacity to see.—Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World"
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“Four narrators work together in this multigenerational story of migration, love, and loss…They bring to life the struggles of Insuk and her turbulent romance…The main story, taking place in the US, is mixed in with vignettes happening on the Korean peninsula. In these moments, Greta Jung’s voice serves as an anchor, filling in Insuk’s tumultuous life with heartfelt drama and empathy.”
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Lyrical. . . . Kaleidoscopic. . . . explores how the past travels with us, and how we may find solace amid loss through relationships with others.—The Los Angeles Times
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Beautiful. . . . it captures the very real whiplash of experience and emotion that comes with being human.—Seattle Times
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A moving and lyrical debut novel. . . . Koh has fully harnessed her potential in this assured outing.—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
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A mesmerizing, delicately crafted novel . . . . Koh’s poetic prose delights with surprising metaphors and a cast of skillfully rendered characters.—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
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Breaks new ground in understanding the Korean diaspora and the emancipating power of love.—Poets & Writers
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As always, Koh’s singular grasp of language results in achingly beautiful writing.—San Francisco Chronicle, A Best Book of Fall
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Kaleidoscopic. . . . exquisite. . . . A family saga which manages to infuse the historical with the mythic, blend the epic with the intimate. . . . extraordinary.—Lit Hub
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A soaring multigenerational saga about learning to accept the past without letting it overshadow the future.—Foreward, starred review
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Known for her poetic language, Koh is a master at weaving stories together, drawing tales of history and contemporary experiences into conversation to help us better understand who we are as humans.—Seattle Magazine
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Richly multi-layered. . . . Koh’s work should resonate strongly with its focus on the desire of wanting to be seen and to belong.—Library Journal
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Weaves personal narratives with historical events for a captivating, moving result.—Alta
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A poetic portrayal of the Korean diaspora in the U.S.. . . .The Liberators marks Koh as possibly the greatest chronicler of American han and as one of the most promising writers today as someone that has exhibited mastery across several genres. —Adroit Journal
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Riveting. . . . seamlessly blends the personal with the political.—The Hudson Review
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Spare, beautiful and richly layered, The Liberators is dazzling. —Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
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E. J. Koh brings a poet’s eye and sensibility to this remarkable novel. Here you will find characters and sentences that will leave you gasping for more. The Liberators captures grief and paranoia and a legacy of colonialism and violence with beauty and measure and grace. —Matthew Salesses, author of The Sense of Wonder
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The beauty, intensity, and breadth of E. J. Koh’s work continues to transcend to new levels. Her language is transformative, making history more alive than we can feel and understand alone. Here is a chorus of lives and a song of peace. With The Liberators, Koh cements her place as one of the greatest Korean American writers of our time. —Joseph Han, author of Nuclear Family
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An elegiac, ferocious, and deeply stirring novel. E. J. Koh melds image and story together precisely, holding up to light the history and making of Korea. I loved The Liberators not only for what it shows us about our world, but moreso, ourselves. —Crystal Hana Kim, author of The Stone Home and If You Leave Me
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E. J. Koh brings her elegant poet's hand to this intimate and expansive mythic novel of four generations of a family suffering sudden absences and war, seeking love and connection, weighted with the complexities of no easy answers. I didn't want this book to end.—Jimin Han, author of The Apology
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E. J. Koh's poetic voice lends itself beautifully to the aching slowness of the search for healing. This book is about intergenerational trauma but it is also a celebration of intergenerational hope. Koh tackles history and sorrow with a delicate hand.—Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of The Sleep Watcher and Starling Days
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The Liberators is a poetic breath, the language as haunting and epic as its story of a divided country's legacy and impact on the Korean diaspora. I'll read anything that E. J. Koh writes. —Krys Lee, author of How I Became a North Korean
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A piercing, patient debut by one of our finest chroniclers of American han. You won't know what hit you until the final, perfect image.—Ed Park, author of Same Bed Different Dreams
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As readers of E. J. Koh's The Liberators we're asked to occupy the boundaries of a divided country, the world of two colonizers, and a family's eventual journey to America where the demarcation lines shift to the palm of one's hand, in the heart and life lines, where the words for love and survival are spelled out in the hand, where Koh's lyrical narrative hand is held over our hearts in undying allegiance —Shawn Wong, author of American Knees
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Another resounding triumph for E.J. Koh: a brave exploration of the complexities of the human experience and the impossible task of making peace with the past.—Book Page, Starred Review
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Koh produces another Intricately accomplished, intimate melding of history and storytelling.—Booklist
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A pleasure. . . . Koh’s writing has a natural elegance. . . . She cleverly and aptly captures a character's essence with minimal description.—Bookbrowse
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About E. J. Koh
E. J. Koh is the author of poetry collection A Lesser Love, winner of the Pleiades Editors Prize (Louisiana State U. Press, 2017). Her poems, translations, and stories have appeared in Boston Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and World Literature Today, among others. She is the recipient of the MacDowell Colony and Kundiman fellowships and the 2017 ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship, and was a runner-up for the 2018 Prairie Schooner Summer Nonfiction Prize.
About the Narrators
Janet Song is the recipient of multiple Earphones Awards and was named one of AudioFile magazine’s Best Voices of 2008. Recent audiobooks include Euna Lee’s The World is Bigger Now and Lisa See’s Shanghai Girls. She lives and works in Southern California as an actor on stage and screen.
Joy Osmanski, theater, television, and film actress, is an award-winning audiobook narrator who has won three AudioFile Earphones Awards. She graduated from Principia College with a degree in creative writing and received her MFA from UC San Diego.