Overview:
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE 2013
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST
LONGLISTED FOR THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION’S ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL
WINNER OF THE CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY:
The Washington Post
Entertainment Weekly
The Wall Street Journal
Los Angeles Times
San Francisco Chronicle
Financial Times
Newsweek
The Daily Beast
The Plain Dealer
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Slate
Salon
BookPage
Shelf Awareness
The Orphan Master's Son is a 2012 novel by American author Adam Johnson. It deals with intertwined themes of propaganda, identity and state power in North Korea. The novel was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
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.
“The single best work of fiction published in 2012 . . . The book’s cunning, flair and pathos are testaments to the still-formidable power of the written word.”—The Wall Street Journal
“An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.”—Pulitzer Prize citation
“A daring and remarkable novel.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“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-mâché 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
ENJOYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
And Blessed Are The Ones Who Care For Their Fellow Men!
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