first set
My last murder I committed twenty-five years ago.
The book
Byongsu Kim is 70. He was a vet. But most of all he was a serial killer. Today, he suffers from Alzheimer’s. His murders more than a quarter of a century back. But now he had once again ran to protect his daughter, he says. Because a successor makes the area unsafe. Kim is convinced to have him in a random encounter detected. And exactly this man introduces him to the daughter as her new boyfriend. I kill this man, he introduces himself as the last task in life, “before I forget, who is he”.
So far, everything is plausible in the “records of a serial killer,” the South Korean author Young-ha Kim seems to be. But the old man, remembers as first-person narrator of his past deeds, the present really, how is she? His dementia is progressing, and the longer this short novel takes, the more blurred and uncertain it all is. He has a daughter? And why is their friend, the alleged serial killer, suddenly a policeman?
“records of a serial killer” is a wonderful book, which pleasantly stands out from the popular serial killer novels, with their slaughterhouses, which are often so abstruse that you are bored only. This Korean serial killer not to do with bloodthirsty stories of his deeds, but with rather laconically narrated memories and observations, which are often delightfully funny. “I’ve left more people alive, than I killed. “You can’t have everything”, – said my father to say.”
“is not Scary Evil, but the time. Because we are powerless.”
among the memories of the killer about a poetry course, he had visited years ago. The teachers he had left alive, because he had praised his poems. Byongsu described his murders, and the lecturer found the metaphors well: “I’m sorry, my Dear. But these were not metaphors”, murder is more like prose, finds Byongsu. “Everyone who has tasted it once, you know. To murder someone is a lot harder and dirtier than you think.”
Young-ha Kim succeeds brilliantly, to make the increasing dementia of the Icherzählers in the course of the narrative, more and more noticeable. The will of his creeping confusion in clear moments of self-aware: “In my mind reigns confusion. With the fading of the memory of the heart do not know where to go.” He then feels that he can’t stop his mental decay. “Frightening is not the Evil, but the time is. Because we are powerless.”
scoring
author
Young-ha Kim, born in 1968 in the South Korean province of Gangwon, as the son of a South Korean officer, is said to have lost due to carbon monoxide poisoning, the memories of his first ten years of life. He studied business administration at the Yonsei University in Seoul, where he had but more of the traditional Korean music dedicated to and active in the student movement dedicated. He published since 1996 novels, for which he was awarded numerous prizes, and is today regarded as one of the major Korean writers of his Generation. He was, among other things, as a lecturer at the Drama School of Korean National University and moderated a radio show on literature , before he began to devote 2008 to the Letter.
in addition to his work as an author, he translated books from English to Korean, for example, “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Several of his own books, including “recordings of a serial killer”, have been filmed in Korea. Kim is married since 1996. In an Interview, he described himself in 2008 as a supporter of the anti-Natal idealism, a philosophy which argues for ethical reasons for childlessness. He lived intermittently in Italy, Canada and the USA; today, he lives and works in Seoul.
Young-ha Kim: “notes of a serial killer” (Original: “Salinja-ui gieok-OBS”, Munhakdongne Publishing co., Paju-si, 2013). From the Korean by Inwon Park. Cass-Verlag, Bad Berka 2020. 152 PP., approx. 29 Fr.
All of the other meetings you will find in the Collection “crime of the week”.
Created: 11.03.2020, 12:15 PM
