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The Orphan Master's Son

2012
Author(s)
Publisher
Random House
An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.
 
Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.
 
Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do 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.”
 
Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love. A towering literary achievement, The Orphan Master’s Son ushers Adam Johnson into the small group of today’s greatest writers.

About the Author

Adam Johnson is a Professor of English with emphasis in creative writing at Stanford University. Winner of a Whiting Award and Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Academy in Berlin, he is the author of several books, including Fortune Smiles, which won the National Book Award, and the novel The Orphan Master’s Son, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. His stories have appeared in Esquire, GQ, Playboy, Harper's Magazine, Granta, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and have been recognized with the Story Prize, The Sunday Times Short Story Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His work has been translated into more than three-dozen languages. He was born in South Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. His teaching and research interests include the development of the novel, indigeneity, the oral tradition, counter narrative, trauma theory and speculative fiction.