"Everything about Jejudo is different from the mainland, starting from the sea. It is light turquoise near a sandy beach, and deepens to emerald-green and sapphire-blue farther from the shore. In some places where the black volcanic rock dashes off to a sudden bluff, the indigo waves look like they’re reflecting the night sky even when it’s sunny and bright. In midwinter the camellia trees with their glossy green leaves were in full bloom, and when the wind blew, their red flowers fell on the black cliffs or tumbled into the sea. The air smelled of salt and ripe tangerines.

Hesoon used to say that Jejudo is the most beautiful place in the world. I haven’t seen much of the world to truly know, but she may have been right."

Beasts of a Little Land, set in Korea from 1917-1965 is both a historical novel (of the Japanese occupation of Korea and the independence movement)combined with a love story, but one where neither the tides of history nor love run smoothly, both frequently diverted by tragedy and division.

I say 'love story', but this would better be described as a story of Inyeon (인연), or more specifically first-love Inyeon 첫사랑과의 인연, a concept that denotes a strong life-long connection between two people, here Jade and JungHo (정호), both born in the latter half of the first decade of the 20th century.

Their first connection is coincidental and one that the characters themselves don't realise even when a clue emerges decades later.

The hanja in JungHo's name mean Righteous Tiger, and Korean tigers (한국 호랑이) are a key motif through the novel. As the story opens in 1917, a Japanese party in the Korean mountains are being (deliberately we discover later) astray by Baek, a travelling silk merchant who they have press-ganged as a guide. At the same time a hunter Nam is tracking what he thinks is a leopard, only to find it is a young tiger, which he doesn't shoot, remembering his father's advice, despite his own reputation for having killed a huge beast, that one only kills a tiger to protect one's own life.

Nam has gone too far from home and into the snow in his hunt, and collapses from exhaustion, but is discovered by the Japanese party, who first save him, with heat, food and drink, but then rely on his skills to save them and guide them back down the mountain. En-route they encounter a much larger tiger, but Nam scares it away, saving both the men and the animal from harming each other. On arrival back in the town, a Japanese major executes Baek for his incompetence, while a captain gives Nam the gift of a silver cigarette case.

In another strand of the story, we discover that Baek traded silk with Silver, a courtesan in Pyongyang. But secretly Silver also raises funds for the independence movement, which Baek then traffics back to them. Learning that Nam's family buried Baek, Silver sends them a gift of a silver ring. Meanwhile, Jade, a young girl is sold to Silver as an apprentice.

A few years later, Jade is sent to live with another courtesan in Seoul and at the same time Nam's son, Jung-ho, arrives in the city from the countryside, making his living as leader of a gang of beggars, his two prized possessions, which he keeps for the rest of his life, the ring and the cigarette case, both inherited from his late father. And there the two meet for the first time.

Rather neatly the Inyeon concept enables what otherwise might be seen as contrived plot coincidences to become a key part of the book's themes. I mentioned the connection between Jade and Jung-ho, but there are several such connections - almost 30 years later Jung-ho's life is spared when the Japanese captain, now much more senior, recognises the cigarette case. And yet, as so often in this novel, tragedy follows redemption, and post-war the same cases leads to him being condemned as a collaborator, despite his war heroics in the resistance.

Some favourite quotes:

The island paradise of Jeju-do, where Jade finishes the novel in a first-person postscript - this quote is where she first heard of it, from her aunt's maid:

"Jade begged their maid Hesoon to tell them stories of her childhood in Jejudo, the magical southern island where there were trees without any branches and wild horses running freely under a snowcapped mountain. Hesoon said her mother and her four sisters were all seawomen who dove in the water to harvest abalones, holding their breath for two minutes at a time."

The rather fractured nature of the resistance (which was to carry forward into post-independence factionalism):

"MYUNGBO RETURNED HOME LATE that week after meeting with his comrades in the Coalition. It tied together groups from all points of the political spectrum under the one banner of independence: the Anarchists, the Communists, the Nationalists, the Christians, the Buddhists, and the Cheondoists. He was one of the senior leaders of the Communists, but among their ranks there were those who saw the struggle as primarily between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the rich and the poor, and not between Japan and Korea, as MyungBo had always believed. The Anarchist credo was that any social order was destructive and oppressive. The Nationalists were the conservatives and some of them put more faith in America than in Korea itself. They also opposed the Communists almost as often as they fought the Japanese. Then some of the Christians were Pacifists, although a few of them had gladly assassinated Japanese generals and governors before putting a gun to their own heads.

All the groups believed that Japan would send every Korean man to the mines and every Korean woman to the military brothels rather than admit defeat; their opinions diverged on what they could do to implode Japan from within before that point."

The Andong Kim family (from which my mother-in-law originates):

"Where is your family from?”
“I was born in Seoul, but my family is originally from Andong.”
“You mean you’re an Andong-Kim?”
SungSoo blurted out, and HanChol gave a slight bow of his head. His intuition about the kid being exceptional might prove true, after all. He surely came from an impoverished cadet branch, but he still belonged to one of the most important families in the country—one that even kings have feared over the centuries."

Historical love-stories aren't really my thing, so 3 stars for me but 4 more generally.

When I finished this book it took me a while to get my breath back, that's how good this book actually is I was breathless. It is captivating, compelling and stunning with vivid descriptions that makes the reader feel like they are right there with the characters. Emotive and unique I loved it