Overview

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A daring and remarkable novel. --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother--a singer stolen to Pyongyang--and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the state soon recognize the boy's loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world, Jun Do rises in the ranks. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress so pure, she didn't know what starving people looked like.
In this epic, critically acclaimed tour de force, Adam Johnson provides a riveting portrait of a world rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love.
Gripping . . . Deftly blending adventure, surreal comedy and Casablanca -style romance, the novel takes readers on a jolting ride through an Orwellian landscape of dubious identity and dangerous doublespeak. -- San Jose Mercury News

This is a novel worth getting excited about. . . . Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mache creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable. -- The Washington Post

[A] brilliant and timely novel. -- The Wall Street Journal
Remarkable and heartbreaking . . . To [the] very short list of exceptional novels that also serve a humanitarian purpose The Orphan Master's Son must now be added. -- The New Republic

A triumph of imagination . . . [Grade: ] A. -- Entertainment Weekly

A spellbinding saga of subverted identity and an irrepressible love. -- Vogue

Full Product Details

Author:   Adam Johnson
Publisher:   Transworld Publishers Ltd
Imprint:   Doubleday
Dimensions:   Width: 15.30cm , Height: 3.20cm , Length: 23.40cm
Weight:   0.601kg
ISBN:  

9780857520562

ISBN 10:   0857520563
Pages:   464
Publication Date:   16 February 2012
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available  
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Reviews

<p> Johnson's novel accomplishes the seemingly impossible: an American writer has masterfully rendered the mysterious world of North Korea with the soul and savvy of a native, from its orphanages and its fishing boats to the kitchens of its high-ranking commanders. While oppressive propaganda echoes throughout, the tone never slides into caricature; if anything, the story unfolds with astounding empathy for those living in constant fear of imprisonment--or worse--but who manage to maintain their humanity against all odds. The book traces the journey of Jun Do, who for years lives according to the violent dictates of the state, as a tunnel expert who can fight in the dark, a kidnapper, radio operator, tenuous hero, and foreign dignitary before eventually taking his fate into his own hands. In one of the book's most poignant moments, a government interrogator, who tortures innocent citizens on a daily basis, remembers his own childhood and the way in which his father explained the inexpl

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