A Dream of Lights

With the global success of The Hunger Games trilogy, so-called dystopian fiction has been a major preoccupation for YA publishers for some time now. The trend has ushered in numerous works of futuristic fantasy, set in frightening alien worlds, teetering on the brink of meltdown due to totalitarian governments, widespread poverty and dehumanising repression.

But who needs fantasy, when all these elements are also present in Kerry Drewery’s second novel, set in an all-too realistic 21st-century North Korea. Yoora is a teenage girl who lives with her parents and grandparents in a small village, where as beulsun – that is, members of the ‘hostile’ class of tainted blood – they are condemned to work on the land with no hope of privileges. Yoora’s life is a miserable and monotonous one of hard labour, punctuated by messages from the ruling Party of Kim Jong-Il: We grow up in the land of freedom/All the little comrades march in rows/Singing in this paradise of peace/Tell me, of what can the world envy us?. So brain-washed is Yoora that she does not question all that has been drummed into her about her homeland until she has a strange dream of a lit-up foreign city, where people go where they please, eat until they are full, and dance until they smile.  The questions this utopian vision raises in her mind, and her growing feelings for Sook, the son of the village secret police chief precipitate a nightmare that is anything but a dream.

It’s hard to conceive that such a dark novel could be based more on real events than the imaginings of its author, but sadly my reading of such non-fiction books as Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy and Blaine Harden’s Escape from Camp 14 confirms that Yoora’s story is, in the main, all too believable. It’s clear that careful research has gone into the writing of this impressive novel.  Yoora’s voice is well sustained throughout, and the horrors she endures – from the tragic fates of her family members, to her prison camp diet of cockroaches – are all the more affecting for their controlled and simple telling. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the appearance of a tiger on the wrong side of the prison fence, and the ending of the book does depend on a monster coincidence. But what precedes it is so awful, that you cannot but root for Yoora’s escape to freedom, wholly believable or not.

North Korea’s recent aggressive posturings have worried my children enough to prompt them to ask questions about this most secretive of countries. Adults wanting to know more should definitely read the Demick and Harden books I mention above. But for younger readers, I’d recommend A Dream of Lights; an uncompromising but unfortunately rather accurate account of a real dystopia of the here and now. If only it were fantasy.