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Loading... Orphan Master's Son (edition 2012)by Adam Johnson
Work detailsThe Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
 Limelite | Jun 14, 2013 |  I was rather skeptical when I heard about this novel. A novel set in the secretive North Korea written by an American? Reading every book published on the country together with some interviews and a brief visit was not going to cut it, I thought. But I soon forgot about that, or at least forgave it, once I started reading. The blurbs inside the cover compared the novel to Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World and Cloud Atlas. (Well, the part in a future dystopic Korea is reminiscent.) It’s one of those novels that I found non-putdownable. I would love to know what a North Korean would make of it--one who’s left and thus free to be honest about that Through-the-Looking-Glass State. Johnson says he’d like to see the day himself when North Koreans can freely write about life in North Korea. This is how the novel describes life there at one point: Ga thought about reminding the Dear Leader that they lived in a land where people had been trained to accept any reality presented to them. He considered sharing how there was only one penalty, the ultimate one, for questioning reality, how a citizen could fall into great jeopardy for simply noticing that realities had changed. Maybe then, it’s a deliberate part of the design that parts of this novel are are hard to credit--and sadly I don’t mean the picture of North Korea. The novel is broken into two parts. The first, “The Biography of Jun Do” is fairly plausible. At least I didn’t question the narrative until a certain visit to Texas--perhaps not uncoincidentally, the land of the tall tale. That first section of the novel is third person, told almost entirely from Jun Do’s point of view. The exceptions are these short official announcements interspersed throughout the book--the source of much of the novel’s dark humor. Then in the second part, “The Confessions of Commander Ga,” we cross the line to the truly far-fetched, and we get not just Jun Do’s perspective, but that of one of the state’s interrogators. Ordinarily when something so strains my suspension of disbelief that far, I’d stop reading, but I kept turning pages--it’s great storytelling. It might have shaved a star off my rating, but it didn’t lose me because the narrative compels belief in its reality--metaphorically even if not literally. Not always easy to read though, parts of this story are unsettling. Particularly trying to decide what we’re supposed to take seriously, what’s parody, what’s lies, what’s truth--even Jun Do’s identity is murky. Other parts are downright macabre, horrifying--old-fashioned fiendish vampires have nothing on this police state. But memorable? Oh yes. This isn’t one I’ll forget easily. (  ) LisaMaria_C | Jun 10, 2013 | Stunningly brilliant dystopia “The key to fighting in the dark is to perceive your opponent, sense him, and never use your imagination. The darkness inside your head is something your imagination fills with stories that have nothing to do with the real darkness around you.” This is on one level a very gripping adventure tale of Pak Jun Do, an orphan who survives the horrific famine () to be become a tunnel fighter, a kidnapper and a spy. It also a love story of a Commander Ga and his wife, a torturers story of dissolution and loss, a mad cap caper of diplomatic one-upmanship and the winning tale of the Best North Korean Story. It’s a very scary, horrific, hugely funny, utterly gripping, heartfelt and bonkers tale of a very real dystopia. It is a story that carries a stark warning on the evil and power of stories; an anti story in two parts, with different narrators (1st person and third) that create a loving chaotic jumble that works solely as a damn fine story at the same time whetting your intellectual taste buds. Did I mention that is very very well written? “Where we are from, he said, stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he'd be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change....But in America, people's stories change all the time. In America, it is the man who matters.” Its trick, for me, is to overcome all the faults I have with dystopian fiction and grab the reader’s imagination and thrust it so deeply into a different culture that when you meet Americans for the 1st time your head explodes with the oddity. Johnson draws an amazing sense of place then fleshes it out with tiny details like the shock of a blank wall (sans Dear Leader photo) and imbues it with characters that fit just so. It hooks you in and never lets you rest as it’s so packed with plot. It will make you complicit in the lies of the anti-story because we know so much more.. the orphan master's son? sure he is, and then lie to you and twist your expectations (but never cruelly) Of course it depends on what you want from the book. It doesn't have a linear narrative nor is it a factual account of North Korea, research was done and liberties taken. It is at once very dark and insane but not nearly as dark or insane as the reality and if that doesn't give you pause for thought I don't know what will. I guess it could be said to be too clever for its own good but I think that’s a matter of taste. I loved this book and I highly recommend it. Literature and story lovers, adventure fiends and Dystopia fans will find something of interest here. Without a doubt one of the best books I have read all year. "Jun Do never looked. He knew the televisions were huge and there was all the rice you could eat. Yet he wanted no part of it - he was scared that if he saw it with his own eyes, his entire life would mean nothing. Stealing turnips from an old man who'd gone blind from hunger? That would have been for nothing." (  )14  clfisha | May 31, 2013 | I've finally figured out why I hated this book so much. It's like Johnson took every North Korean experience he'd read about (kidnapping Japanese citizens, prison camps, the film industry) - I'm pretty sure we've read some of the same books, actually - and decided to cram it all into one stupid epic. It's like a North Korean Forrest Gump. Implausibly daft. (  )1 whitsunweddings | May 25, 2013 | Maybe I expect too much. I was ecstatic when I found out my library had this Pulitzer prize winning book available immediately. I couldn't start reading it fast enough. This book is divided in two parts. Book I was very intriguing and I read through it pretty rapidly. Book II almost made me send this book back to the library ahead of schedule. The Oprhan Master's Son is a story of survival and love all while living under a brutal government regime. Pak Jun Do is simply trying to survive in North Korea. He does a pretty good job at doing so and at times it seems as if he is invincible. There is a certain peacefulness about Pak Jun Do's character even though he lives in the midst of pure wickedness. Suddenly, Pak Jun Do assumes another identity and when this change is made the story becomes quite erratic. Honestly, it seemed like Johnson was writing just to be writing no main objective. This story never came together for me. There was so much torture and gruesome survival methods described until it felt like those were the author's main focus. In the midst of all this, there was the most unlikely love story that blossomed which began with a random tattoo. Another highlight of the story was when Pak Jun Do got a chance to visit Texas of all places. As crazy as a North Korean citizen visiting Texas may sound the author made it fit in pretty well. In Book II the author introduced an interrogator of the state whose story felt "thrown" into the narrative but it was very interesting and kept me reading. I would describe this book as tedious. Johnson could have thrown away 150pgs easily. Being that this was a fictional account of North Korean society I did not put much thought into all the propaganda and prison camps described. The ending was vague as was about half of the book. (  ) pinkcrayon99 | May 22, 2013 |
 "Readers who enjoy a fast-paced political thriller will welcome this wild ride through the amazingly conflicted world that exists within the heavily guarded confines of North Korea. Highly recommended. "
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When I arrived at Pyongyang's Sunan Airport a few years ago, my head was still spinning from a landing on a runway lined with cattle, electric fences and the fuselages of other jets whose landings hadn't gone so well. Even though I'd spent three years writing and researching The Orphan Master's Son, I was unprepared for what I was about to encounter in “the most glorious nation in the world.”
I'd started writing about North Korea because of a fascination with propaganda and the way it prescribes an official narrative to an entire people. In Pyongyang, that narrative begins with the founding of a glorious nation under the fatherly guidance of Kim Il Sung, is followed by years of industry and sacrifice among its citizenry, so that when Kim Jong Il comes to power, all is strength, happiness and prosperity. It didn't matter that the story was a complete fiction--every citizen was forced to become a character whose motivations, desires and fears were dictated by this script. The labor camps were filled with those who hadn't played their parts, who'd spoken of deprivation instead of plenitude and the purest democracy.
When I visited places like Pyongyang, Kaesong City, Panmunjom and Myohyangsan, I understood that a genuine interaction with a North Korean citizen was unlikely, since contact with foreigners was illegal. As I walked the streets, not one person would risk a glance, a smile, even a pause in their daily routine. In the Puhung Metro Station, I wondered what happened to personal desires when they came into conflict with a national story. Was it possible to retain a personal identity in such conditions, and under what circumstances would a person reveal his or her true nature? These mysteries--of subsumed selves, of hidden lives, of rewritten longings--are the fuel of novels, and I felt a powerful desire to help reveal what a dynastic dictatorship had forced these people to conceal.
Of course, I could only speculate on those lives, filling the voids with research and imagination. Back home, I continued to read books and seek out personal accounts. Testimonies of gulag survivors like Kang Chol Hwan proved invaluable. But I found that most scholarship on the DPRK was dedicated to military, political and economic theory. Fewer were the books that focused directly on the people who daily endured such circumstances. Rarer were the narratives that tallied the personal cost of hidden emotions, abandoned relationships, forgotten identities. These stories I felt a personal duty to tell. Traveling to North Korea filled me with a sense that every person there, from the lowliest laborer to military leaders, had to surrender a rich private life in order to enact one pre-written by the Party. To capture this on the page, I created characters across all levels of society, from the orphan soldier to the Party leaders. And since Kim Jong Il had written the script for all of North Korea, my novel didn't make sense without writing his role as well.
Anti-tank devices seen while traveling south from Pyongyang toward Panmunj
Air raid sirens(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Feb 2013 13:54:09 -0500)
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."… (more)
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Wikipedia in English
This is a novel divided into two parts. In the first, the orphan hero, Jun Do is a functioning cog in the brutal regime -- a puppet-master's son. He is an effective assassin who can kill in total darkness, an electronic eavesdropper for the State, and an English translator. It is in that latter capacity, in part two of the novel, after a pivotal journey as a member of a North Korean delegation to Texas, that "John Do" transmogrifies into Commander Ga, administrator of prison mines, taking the corporeal place of the man who bore that name and living his life. Ironically, as he changes his name and acquires a fictional identity, Jun Do/Ga acquires true personhood and inviolable self-identity.
Johnson manipulates time, narrative style from the fictional portions to the propaganda portions, and reality until the reader's head spins trying to get its bearings and make sense of the orphan-master son's world. This disorientation to reason and reasonableness is purposeful. What better way can Johnson transmit to his readers the shattered mental condition that is suffered by North Koreans who try to cope with living within a regime that disappears elderly people by way of retirement; that enslaves its population, children and adults, then drains their blood after having drained their energy; that creates its own reality designed to shift on the whim of its cultist head of state; that produces so much uncertainty and so little food that people are starved emotionally and bodily?
By the end of the novel, in spite of the head-snapping roller coaster read, I came away believing that I probably made more sense of the book than a North Korean citizen can make sense of his daily life.
The Orphan Master's Son is a powerful novel making the argument against Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" -- here is deliberate, imaginative, and unfathomable evil -- that is designed to make one's reading of it as close an experience to living it as can be achieved. (