The Orphan Master’s Son – Adam Johnson (2012)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son is a daring, labyrinthine novel set in the oppressive and surreal world of North Korea. The story follows Jun Do (a homophone for “John Doe”), a nameless everyman who rises from the brutal confines of an orphanage to become a state-sanctioned kidnapper, naval operative, and eventually, through a twist of fate, an imposter in the inner circle of Kim Jong-il.
Johnson blends Kafkaesque absurdity with heart-wrenching humanity, exposing the machinery of propaganda through Jun Do’s harrowing journey—from the tunnels beneath the DMZ to the decks of a fishing vessel turned spy ship, and finally to the halls of Pyongyang’s elite, where he assumes the identity of a vanished national hero. The narrative fractures into competing “truths” as the state’s loudspeakers blare revisionist tales, while Jun Do and the defiant Sun Moon, North Korea’s greatest actress, quietly resist in the shadows.
A masterpiece of historical imagination, the novel is as much a love story as it is a searing indictment of tyranny.
“In a land where fiction is reality, the greatest act of rebellion is to tell your own story.”
