Asian Trips - The Ginseng Hunter: A Novel
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List Price: $21.95
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Manufacturer: Nan A. Talese
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780385517393
ISBN: 0385517394
Label: Nan A. Talese
Manufacturer: Nan A. Talese
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: 2008-04-15
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Release Date: 2008-04-15
Studio: Nan A. Talese
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Editorial Reviews:
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Set at the turn of the twenty-first century in China along the Tumen River, which separates northeast China and North Korea, The Ginseng Hunter is an unforgettable portrait of life along a fragile border.
A Chinese ginseng hunter lives alone in the valley and spends his days up in the mountains looking for ginseng and preparing for winter. He is scarcely aware of the larger world until shadowy figures hiding in the fields, bodies floating in the river, and rumors of thievery and murder begin to intrude on his cherished solitude. On one of his monthly trips to Yanji, where he buys supplies and visits a brothel, he meets a young North Korean prostitute. Through her vivid tales, the tragedy occurring across the river unfolds, and over the course of the year the hunter unnervingly discovers that the fates of the young woman and four others rest in his hands.
Spare, intimate, and strikingly atmospheric, The Ginseng Hunter takes us into the little-understood lives of North Koreans and confirms Jeff Talarigo's immense gift for storytelling.
The Ginseng Hunter is based on actual events that are happening today in North Korea, also known as the DPRK, and along the Northeast border of China, to where many North Korean refugees flee.
In response to this humanitarian crisis, Liberty in North Korea, or LiNK, an international NGO, maintains programs in refugee protection and resettlement, leadership development for North Korean defectors, advocacy to stakeholders in the North Korean crisis, and the empowerment of citizens to make a difference with effective action. To learn more, please visit www.LiNKglobal.org .
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Ginseng Hunter
Comment: In this small-sized book, Talarigo paints pictures with his words. It is a sad, beautiful, haunting tale that touches political, environmental and humanistic implications. It is a tale of how the life of any person can be affected in ways beyond his or her control, yet how small acts of human kindness are what make us human. He has helped to educate readers about life in North Korea and thus has given a voice to the voiceless. An excellent read.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Nameless
Comment: But hardly faceless. As in The Pearl Diver, Jeff Talarigo does more with less. This short but powerful glimpse, back and forth across a river at North Korea's brutal communist regime, reveals characters stripped of everything but their will to live. Most don't. Talarigo's spare, evocative prose, however, forces us to escape with them, sit on a bed in a Chinese brothel with them, and halt as they're shot by one of their own trying to cross a river for food. We may never get a more crystallized, precise view of the plight of North Koreans.
Customer Rating:
Summary: In beautiful poetic prose, a gifted author describes a troubled time
Comment: In its upper reaches in Northeast Asia, the Tumen River forms the border between China and North Korea. Many refugees defecting from North Korea during the 1990's famine cross over the Tumen.
North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong II assures his starving people, in propaganda typical of a repressive regime, that other nations suffer worse conditions.
In his second novel, Jeff Talarigo (The Pearl Diver, 2004) narrates these troubled times.
The story begins with the ginseng hunter recalling the day the sparrows died. In an ill-advised scheme, Chairman Mao orders that the sparrows, which are devouring the wheat crop, be killed. Nature soon takes its revenge. Swarms of locusts, no longer held in check by the sparrows, ravage the crops, causing a famine in which millions of Chinese starve.
The protagonist, now a grown man, has a small farm near the Chinese city of Tumen and gathers ginseng roots in the nearby mountains. Once a month he travels to Yanji, the provincial capital, where he visits a brothel. There he meets a young courtesan, a refugee from North Korea, who tells him of horrific conditions in her homeland.
Describing a desperate struggle for survival, Talarigo's spare, graceful and beautiful prose juxtaposes cruelty and compassion. The author brilliantly elevates his story above the poignant to the heartbreaking.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written
Comment: This book was a quick read for me. I couldn't put it down. We don't know anyone's name, but you don't even realize it because the images are written so well you feel like you are with him. We have a Chinese man who lives on his family farm and hunts for ginseng for his living. He meets several different escapees from North Korea and tries to help them.
Very interesting to read about and you will not want to put this book down! I didn't.
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Summary: the distant land of the human heart
Comment: This novel explores, at first, the psyche and existence of a middle aged Ginseng Hunter is western China, at the North Korean border. He wanders through silent and fragrant mountain forest in pursuit of his elusive and rare quarry, with no company other than the memories of a solitary and painful life.
Gradually, like the nearby river, the tale flows into the land of political oppression, as dead bodies float down the river, and a child steals corn from his garden. He visits a whorehouse and a new woman there speaks of the "Dear Leader" across the border, the terrible punishments for disloyalty, the death for stealing a grain of rice.
In the tradition of Steinbeck, Talarigo speaks of the good and evil of everyday life- of the choices we make, of the personal as politics and of politics as personal. In choosing a distant and obscure cataclysm of human madness, he seems to say to us- look in a mirror. The secrets of your heart, silent as a forest and as eternal as the changing seasons, are no mystery. In the final scene, a garden is planted without the farmer knowing who will eat of it. Nothing ends here and there is no closure, but that is true of life as well.
This book is about what makes us human and how we survive our own darkness.
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