The New York Times / May 05, 2020

iLiteratura.cz / May 21, 2018

Povídky anonymního autora popisují severokorejskou realitu bez jakéhokoli romantického nádechu boje dobra proti zlu. Jejich protagonisté jsou až nepříjemně autentičtí a nepřibarvení. Všední příběhy snímají výseč světa způsobem, který má blíže dokumentu než fikci, a jen jejich literární forma v nás vyvolává iluzi, že se odehrávají mimo náš dosah. Opak je bohužel pravdou.

Evening Standard / August 28, 2019

The original bundle of papers also contained some fragmentary poems written on scraps of paper, and it is these that are now being published for the first time in English. Given their fragile state, it has taken time to piece them together. But here they are. 

NK NEWS / September 20, 2019

The manuscript was yellowing, frayed – so fragile, in fact, that Do Hee-yun thought it might crumble in his hands. This was a hallowed text for a human rights lawyer. Hidden inside a copy of “The Selected Works of Kim Il-Sung,” these loose sheaves of paper represented the first complete collection of dissident literature to be successfully smuggled out of North Korea.  Comprising seven short stories and over fifty poems, the manuscript provided a nuanced, if plaintive, insight into the interior lives of ordinary North Koreans.

cotidianul / February 09, 2018

hyphenmagazine / May 05, 2018

'The Accusation: Forbidden Stories From Inside North Korea' unravels seven stories by Bandi, the pseudonym for the writer who still resides in North Korea. Smuggled out by an escaping relative, Bandi’s manuscript was translated by Deborah Smith and is his first and only published book to date. Bandi was born in a northeastern province of Hamgyeong and was a child during the start of the Korean War. Bandi gravitated towards literature and began to make a name for himself when his writing was first published in North Korean magazines in his 20s. After putting off his writing career, he eventually joined the Chosun Literature and Art General League, where he became a contributor to different periodicals. Bandi was spurred into action after living through the famine of the 1990s after he witnessed many people live through miserable conditions and committed to denouncing North Korea’s contradictory socialist system...

National Public Radio / November 30, 2017

The Aspen Institute has unveiled the nominees for its first-ever fiction prize, a potpourri of 20 works plucked from across the world. Novels, short story collections, English-language or in translation — whatever their differences, each of the nominees "illuminates a vital contemporary issue and demonstrates the transformative power of literature on thought and culture," in the estimation of Aspen Words Literary Prize judges.

The News on Sunday / December 10, 2017

Bandi, an anonymous dissident North Korean writer, risked his life to have his handwritten manuscript leave the country; his short stories look into the soul of the Workers’ Party, its machinations, and discover its dark, demonic heart.

World Literature Today / December 12, 2017

Looking back on 2017, it’s easy to declare the year a success for literary translation, which continued to thrive and move in exciting new directions. Resisting again the temptation to expand our list, we offer an admittedly incomplete collection of the year’s English translations. Bandi, The Accusation, trans. Deborah Smith (Grove Atlantic) Hye-young Pyun, The Hole, trans. Sora Kim-Russell (Arcade) Han Yujoo, The Impossible Fairy Tale, trans. Janet Hong (Graywolf Press) 

National Post / December 18, 2017

THE ACCUSATION by Bandi (tr. Deborah Smith) named one of the Best Books of 2017 by National Post, and earlier last month by The Globe and Mail