Kim Jong Un, This One’s For You!
The 2013 Pulitzer Winner for Fiction.
In an insightful review of Adam Johnson’s Pulitzer prize-winning The Orphan Master’s Son, Truthdig book reviewer Cherilyn Parsons wonders if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will read this novel.
Ms Parson’s review is appropriately headed ‘Kim Jong Un, This One’s For You’!
Here’s an excerpt from the review:
Citizens, gather ’round your loudspeakers! It is time for the final installment of this year’s Best North Korean Story, though it might as well be titled the Greatest North Korean Story of All Time!—from ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’.
I wonder if Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s new, poker-faced leader, will read this novel. If he does, he may be baffled unless his Switzerland schooling gave him a real understanding of Kafka, Nabokov, Pynchon, Swift and Borges. ‘The Orphan Master’s Son’ by Adam Johnson—an American—is a rich, careening, dystopian tale that stretches the form of a novel to give us a visceral hit of life inside North Korea.
So Kim Jong Un, this review’s for you. This audacious and (to despots like you) dangerous novel set in your country is definitely the Greatest North Korean Story of All Time, no matter what you might decree.
‘The Orphan Master’s Son’ is about a lot of things—freedom and captivity, love and loss, truth and lies—but at its deepest level it’s about identity and story. It’s about who holds the power to say, “This is who I am.”
For the full review go to: In-Depth Review and Analysis of the 2013 Pulitzer Winner for Fiction
For PBS video interview with author Adam Johnson go to: http://video.pbs.org/video/2191584507/
For sample chapters of The Orphan Master’s Son go to: http://www.amazon.com/The-Orphan-Masters-Son-ebook/dp/B006UIUJ2A/
And for the latest on arts and culture, we recommend Truthdig. Check it out at: http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture
Happy reading! -Lance
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Morcan Books & Films 