"Silent Marionette"

The novel Silent Marionette is a compelling saga of war, horror and pain. During the Japanese occupation of Korea fourteen-year-old Pil-nyo and her family have been living their traditional lives essentially uninterrupted until one day a group of Japanese soldiers storms her village. They shoot her father, brutally rape and murder her mother and older sister, and burn her other two little sisters alive. Pil-nyo is defiled, but allowed to live. From the trauma of what she has seen and experienced she loses her ability to speak.



She is sent to Manchuria to serve the Japanese army as a comfort woman. In the brothel she and the other girls are forced to service as many as 60 or 70 soldiers a day under conditions so brutal as to defy description. After a long time Pil-nyo finds some solace as well as a way to communicate with herself and others through her talent for drawing.



In this sharp and shocking book author Nily Naiman presents muteness as a language in itself. By sentencing herself to muteness, Pil-nyo escapes complete mental and physical collapse and is able to deal with the irrational guilt that eats her alive and to which under other circumstances she would simply succumb. Despite her suffering, she is able to find comfort in the silence. Naiman is not only successful in her description of the horror of post-traumatic silence, but also makes it clear that muteness can be much louder than words.



The descriptions of the comfort women’s hunger, pain, and humiliation are merciless. The girls become accepting of their worthlessness. Their enmity is directed toward themselves rather than toward their captors and abusers. Each one is in her own pain. Each girl is experiencing her own, unique hallucinations and creating her own irrational behavior in response to the suffering.



Haru, the Japanese army deserter, brings a new point of view of the enemy. All the myths of camaraderie in the army in time of war are shattered by him in this story. He symbolizes the disappointment the Japanese soldiers felt toward their leaders and toward their country. Haru takes upon himself full moral responsibility for the terror the Japanese Empire inflicted in the Pacific War. He is torn apart over questions of loyalty and morality.



Silent Marionette is a riveting experience that will attract and hold readers of all nationalities and ethnicities because its themes are at once both unique and universal.



Would you please consider representing me? Thank you. Please see the synopsis below.

Sincerely,

Nily Naiman







Synopsis: Silent Marionette

This is the story of Pil-nyo, a Korean girl forced to serve the Japanese army as a comfort woman during World War II.

In a remote village in Korea that is under Japanese occupation a group of Japanese soldiers attacks the villagers. They brutally rape and kill Pil-nyo’s mother and older sister, shoot her father, and burn her two little sisters alive. Fourteen-year-old Pil-nyo is molested by an officer. She loses her ability to speak from the trauma of what she has seen and experienced.


She manages to escape to the woods where she hides for a couple of days, but confused, desolate, and still in shock, she lets the Japanese soldiers find her and take her with them. Young Pil-nyo is sent on a train to Manchuria, where she is stationed as a comfort lady.


The Japanese established many comfort stations to serve their soldiers throughout the Pacific nations that they conquered. The official reasons given by the leadership were to protect the soldiers from venereal diseases and to prevent them from committing rapes. The Japanese kidnapped some 200,000 girls throughout the Pacific nations and forced them to serve in comfort stations and brothels.


Soldiers would line up at the comfort stations from early morning until late at night to take their turns with the girls. Officers were permitted to stay the night with them. The comfort girls were brutally tortured and beaten by the soldiers. Food and medicine were in short supply and inadequate to sustain the girls. They had to wash the condoms after each encounter with a soldier and use them many times before discarding them. The girls sometimes had to service 60-70 men a day.


Pil-nyo starts working right after undergoing sterilization surgery. Cycles of bitterness and anger eventually give way to complete apathy in response to what she is going through. Her friend Kumikko manages to leave the brothel and moves to the medical officer’s room. She gives Pil-nyo papers and pencils and encourages her to draw.



From here on her life begins to change. Pil-nyo discovers her talent as an artist and she finds a safety valve for her soul. In the brothel her guards do not see her anymore as just another marionette, just another sex toy; she is now an artist. They come to her cell to be sketched, as do the Japanese soldiers and officers. The mute Korean artist becomes somewhat of a celebrity.


After Kumikko decides to put an end to her life, a Philippine girl arrives at the brothel. Nina is an interesting, sophisticated, controversial young woman. She is one of the highlights of the story.
Nina is a direct opposite of Pil-nyo, but the connection that is formed between them through Pil-nyo’s art and silence is stronger than anything words could have accomplished. Pil-nyo becomes Nina’s only trusted ally and only witness to Nina’s tragedy.


The story deals mercilessly with rape, humiliation, lust, confusion, hunger, pain, torture and abuse. Pil-nyo’s silence in this book is the loudest of all sounds; it screams and cries out for individual recognition. Pil-nyo journeys from despair to confidence and awareness of her worth through her art, her Buddhism, and her memories. The terrible atmosphere, the hunger and the screaming in the brothel, are part of the daily routine; and the only way for Pil-nyo to keep her sanity is to draw and sink deeper into her muteness.


When the Russians finally enter Manchuria and free her, she gets together with Liu-fang, a Chinese girl who was serving with her as a comfort woman in the brothel. The girls decide to seek a new life by attempting to travel to Hong Kong together with Haru, a Japanese officer who has deserted from his army.


The passage to Hong Kong becomes a voyage of self-discovery and self-examination for all three of them. The people they meet on the way, the sights of postwar China that they encounter, and their thoughts and emotions are all part of a surprising, tragic series of events.


The Japanese government has never apologized or offered compensation to the surviving comfort women or their families. This book is only one of many calls to the Japanese government to do so.