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An Amazon Best Book of the Month, January 2012: It is only January, but Adam Johnson’s astonishing novel is destined to cast a long shadow over the year in books. Jun Do is The Orphan Master’s Son, a North Korean citizen with a rough past who is working as a government-sanctioned kidnapper when we first meet him. He is hardly a sympathetic character, but sympathy is not author Johnson’s aim. In a totalitarian nation of random violence and bewildering caprice—a poor, gray place that nonetheless refers to itself as “the most glorious nation on earth”—an unnatural tension exists between a citizen’s national identity and his private life. Through Jun Do’s story we realize that beneath the weight of oppression and lies beats a heart not much different from our own—one that thirsts for love, acceptance, and hope—and that realization is at the heart of this shockingly believable, immersive, and thrilling novel. --Chris Schluep
Adam Johnson on The Orphan Master's Son
When I arrived at Pyongyang's Sunan Airport a few years ago, my head was still spinning from a landing on a runway lined with cattle, electric fences and the fuselages of other jets whose landings hadn't gone so well. Even though I'd spent three years writing and researching The Orphan Master's Son, I was unprepared for what I was about to encounter in “the most glorious nation in the world.”
I'd started writing about North Korea because of a fascination with propaganda and the way it prescribes an official narrative to an entire people. In Pyongyang, that narrative begins with the founding of a glorious nation under the fatherly guidance of Kim Il Sung, is followed by years of industry and sacrifice among its citizenry, so that when Kim Jong Il comes to power, all is strength, happiness and prosperity. It didn't matter that the story was a complete fiction--every citizen was forced to become a character whose motivations, desires and fears were dictated by this script. The labor camps were filled with those who hadn't played their parts, who'd spoken of deprivation instead of plenitude and the purest democracy.
When I visited places like Pyongyang, Kaesong City, Panmunjom and Myohyangsan, I understood that a genuine interaction with a North Korean citizen was unlikely, since contact with foreigners was illegal. As I walked the streets, not one person would risk a glance, a smile, even a pause in their daily routine. In the Puhung Metro Station, I wondered what happened to personal desires when they came into conflict with a national story. Was it possible to retain a personal identity in such conditions, and under what circumstances would a person reveal his or her true nature? These mysteries--of subsumed selves, of hidden lives, of rewritten longings--are the fuel of novels, and I felt a powerful desire to help reveal what a dynastic dictatorship had forced these people to conceal.
Of course, I could only speculate on those lives, filling the voids with research and imagination. Back home, I continued to read books and seek out personal accounts. Testimonies of gulag survivors like Kang Chol Hwan proved invaluable. But I found that most scholarship on the DPRK was dedicated to military, political and economic theory. Fewer were the books that focused directly on the people who daily endured such circumstances. Rarer were the narratives that tallied the personal cost of hidden emotions, abandoned relationships, forgotten identities. These stories I felt a personal duty to tell. Traveling to North Korea filled me with a sense that every person there, from the lowliest laborer to military leaders, had to surrender a rich private life in order to enact one pre-written by the Party. To capture this on the page, I created characters across all levels of society, from the orphan soldier to the Party leaders. And since Kim Jong Il had written the script for all of North Korea, my novel didn't make sense without writing his role as well.
Featured Photographs
Anti-tank devices seen while traveling south from Pyongyang toward Panmunj | DPRK soldier |
Air raid sirens | Revelutionary Martyr's Cemetery on Mount Taesong |
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2013 - the dark and hilarious story of a young man's passage through the prison camps and dictatorship of North Korea. For fans of THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE and CLOUD ATLAS- WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION- NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER- NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST- 'You know you are in the hands of someone who can tell a story. Fantastic' ZADIE SMITHThe award-winning and New York Times bestselling novel- a dark and witty story of the rise of a young orphan in the surreal and tyrannical regime of North Korea .Young Pak Jun Do is convinced he is special. He knows he must be the unique son of the master of the orphanage, and definitely not some kid dumped by his parents. Surely it was obvious from the way his father singled him out for regular beating?He finds his calling when he is picked as a spy and kidnapper for his nation, the glorious Democratic Republic of North Korea.He knows he must find his true love, Sun Moon, the greatest opera star who ever lived, before it's too late.He knows he's not like the other prisoners in the camp.He's going to get out soon.Isn't he?This hilarious, dark literary epic of a young boy's rise in North Korea from orphan to high-ranking officer won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the National Book Award.Adam Johnson is working on a new work of fiction.'An addictive novel of daring ingenuity' DAVID MITCHELL'Excavates the very meaning of life' NEW YORK TIMES - WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION - NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER- NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST- 'You know you are in the hands of someone who can tell a story. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780552778251
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