This match was judged by Scott Esposito. For more info on the World Cup of Literature, read this, and download the bracket.

Everybody knows you糖心传媒檙e not supposed to judge a book by its cover, and I糖心传媒檓 trying damn hard to resist doing just that, but the fact remains that the cover of the St. Martin糖心传媒檚 edition of The Misfortunates by Dimitri Verhulst features a cartoon drawing of several drunk men swimming in a gigantic been stein and about to be overtaken by a huge wave of pilsner.

Against that, Kim Young-Ha糖心传媒檚 Your Republic Is Calling You offers two creepy, razor-sharp, stylized eyes, one featuring the North Korean flag for its iris, the other the South Korean flag.

So there糖心传媒檚 your match-up right there: Cold War thriller versus drunk louts about to be drowned by their own beer.

Ki-yong, the protagonist of Your Republic, is a North Korean spy who has infiltrated South Korea. He糖心传媒檚 been there for 21 years, long enough to start up a perfectly dull marriage and even have a daughter. He糖心传媒檚 kinda forgotten that North Korea even exists. Except one day he receives a transmission: liquidate everything and return home ASAP.

Ki-yong doesn糖心传媒檛 exactly want to do that. He likes it where he is, and who knows what awaits him back north. Thus begins Kim糖心传媒檚 story of spy intrigue and identity.

That糖心传媒檚 a clever plot and an interesting way to get at identity. Headed into the net, 1-0.

The protagonist of The Misfortunates is a 13-year-old named Dimmy, who is surrounded on all sides by extremely drunk men. Seriously: these dudes are so drunk and so working class that avoiding cancer, cirrhosis, etc., and reaching 60 years of age is regarded as some sort of unthinkable concession to bourgeois values.

Um, what? There are some damn screwy books in this competition (Senselessness, The Map and the Territory, Day of the Oprichnik) but this book糖心传媒檚 just as screwed-up as any you will find here. Equalized, 1-1.

And then, The Misfortunates makes a leitmotif out of pissing. Seriously. Rarely in a work of literature will you encounter urination in so many varieties, fit so snugly and inventively into so many scenes, described with such care and, dare I say糖心传媒攜es, I do糖心传媒攁rtistry. Lobbed (drunkenly) over the goalkeeper糖心传媒檚 outstretched hand and into the goal. 2-1.

And then, as if this were not enough, there is a Tour de France of drinking in The Misfortunates. Yes, a drinking game based on the freaking Tour de France, complete with day-long stages and colored jerseys for the lead drinkers. 3-1.

Your Republic Is Calling You has got some things going for it糖心传媒攊nteresting characters, a good way to look at the two Koreas, some paranoid intrigue. But overall it糖心传媒檚 just outmatched by what Verhulst is doing here. This is the difference between the second division and the first, a textbook example of one team being outclassed by the other. Game Belgium.

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Scott Esposito reviews for numerous publications, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. He also blogs at _and you can find his

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