Authored by an anonymous writer and smuggled out of North Korea, The Accusation is the first work of fiction to come out of the country and a moving portrayal of life under a totalitarian regime.

In 1989, a North Korean dissident writer, known to us only by the pseudonym Bandi, began to write a series of stories about life under Kim Il-sung’s totalitarian regime. Smuggled out of North Korea and published around the world, The Accusation provides a unique and shocking window into this most secretive of countries.

Bandi’s profound, deeply moving, vividly characterized stories tell of ordinary men and women facing the terrible absurdity of daily life in North Korea: a factory supervisor caught between loyalty to an old friend and loyalty to the Party; a woman struggling to feed her husband through the great famine; the staunch Party man whose actor son reveals to him the theatre that is their reality; the mother raising her child in a world where the all-pervasive propaganda is the very stuff of childhood nightmare.

The Accusation is a heartbreaking portrayal of the realities of life in North Korea. It is also a reminder that humanity can sustain hope even in the most desperate of circumstances — and that the courage of free thought has a power far beyond those who seek to suppress it.

BANDI, which means “firefly” in Korean, is a pseudonym for a writer who is still living in his homeland of North Korea, and who wrote these stories in secret. The Accusation is his only published book to date.

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DEBORAH SMITH is a British translator of Korean fiction. She translated The Vegetarian by Korean author Han Kang, for which she and the author were co-winners of the Man Booker International Prize in 2016. After graduating from the University of Cambridge, Smith began learning Korean in 2010. She founded Tilted Axis Press, a non-profit publishing house focusing on contemporary fiction specifically from Asia. She is currently a research fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Deborah Smith's profile page

• Commended, A GLOBE AND MAIL TOP 100 BOOK
• Commended, NATIONAL POST 99 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Smuggled out of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 25 years after being written, this pseudonymous collection covers the final years of the rule of Kim Il-sung. Depicting everyday citizens trying to make the best of a bad situation, The Accusation gives a human face to the people living under a brutal regime.

National Post

Searing fiction by an anonymous dissident . . . A fierce indictment of life in the totalitarian North.

New York Times

This is an extraordinary tale of ordinary people in North Korea . . . A highly readable, nuanced, credible picture of a country where ordinary people go about their lives treading around the regime, and sometimes bumping into it.

BBC World Service

Fugitive fiction ― literally ― from inside North Korea, devastatingly critical of the Kim dynasty and its workers’ paradise … There is a streak of satire in these stories, but mostly they are grimly realistic … Certainly the author has access to the broad sweep of North Korean society, from industrial workers and farmers to midlevel political functionaries … An important document of witness.

Kirkus Reviews

These short works offer powerful insights into a world behind walls . . . In its scope and courage, The Accusation is an act of great love.

Guardian