The Orphan Master's Son

In a stunning feat of imagination, Johnson puts us inside Jun Do (yep, John Doe), a North Korean orphan who stumbles from poverty to a job as body double for a Hero of the Eternal Revolution. The closed world of North Korea revealed here—where businessmen are conscripted to work in the rice fields and the ruthless Kim Jong-il is still the Dear Leader—goes beyond anything Orwell ever imagined. The Orphan Master’s Son veers from cold terror to surrealistic humor with ease, and succeeds as bo [...]

CITIZENS, gather 'round the individualistic screens of your capitalistically-exploited folding-computers and other pocket-sized computational devices! The Dear Reviewer has much omniscient wisdom and many synoptic truths to impart! Set aside your Facebook and Twitter feeds and summon every last ounce of patriotic love for and devotion to the Democratic People’s Republic of in order to focus your cluttered Western minds and screen-worn eyes for several uninterrupted minutes on this update of p [...]

This is not an easy book to read. It preys on the minds of readers, on the fears and hopes that stem from our deeply ingrained cultural concepts, our habitual comfortable worldview. It takes you to the place where you can no longer be sure what is based in reality and what is the result of an absurdist deeply satirical interpretation of it.This is a book that's set in North Korea, and its protagonist is cleverly - perhaps overly so - named Jun Do (that is, 'John Doe', the North Korean everyman, [...]

"The Orphan Master's Son Has No Clothes" -- I'd love to take credit for coming up with that beautifully stated, extremely accurate summing up of this awful, awful book, but I can't. I suppose, if nothing else, I can boast having married the man who did. I wasn't 30 pages into this farce (and I'm not speaking of the story stylings) when it became quite clear that all the praise being heaped upon this pile of literary poo (I am forever mindful that kids may be reading these reviews) was the work o [...]

Literature is a fiction that tells a greater truth – so somebody wise once said. But the truth is a tricky business. This epic story set in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (that’s the bad one) offers frequent reminders of that fact. First, there’s the question of where the genuinely dire straits of North Koreans end and the semi-satirical abstractions begin. Did Johnson exaggerate the atrocities? Did his fiction indeed tell a greater truth? Then there’s a related question abo [...]

Read it quick before North Korea decides you can't.If I wasn’t glad that Kim Jong Il is dead before reading this book, I certainly am now.Pak Jun Do never knew his mother and is raised in the orphanage his father runs. Because of this, he is constantly mistaken for an orphan for the rest of his life. Eventually Jun Do winds up as one of the tunnel fighters who work in secret passages under the DMZ into South Korea, but he’s recruited to be part of a team that goes out in boats and snatches r [...]

Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son defies categories and captives the reader's attention end to end. We are brought face to face with the brutal inhumanity of the Kim Jong Il dictatorship (which the author visited and tried to depict as accurately as possible given the lack of defectors and their testimony). But the even deeper story was how much suffering and deprivation humans can endure while remaining human.For another interesting take on North Korea, I would highly recommend Guy Delisle [...]

I'll preface this review by saying that, in many ways, this is an excellent novel. It's intelligent, rich in symbolism and metaphor, and takes place in one of the most interesting contemporary settings an author could choose. It has many moments of terrific insight regarding one of the strangest and most tragic places on Earth. I can see why it's getting so much attention.All of that aside, this book did not work for me. It doesn't read like a book that was so good that they had to award it the [...]

Onvan : The Orphan Master's Son - Nevisande : Adam Johnson - ISBN : 812992792 - ISBN13 : 9780812992793 - Dar 443 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2012

If Mike Reynolds hadn't raved about this book I probably wouldn't have read it. Here's his review:/review/show/I'm glad I read The Orphan Master's Son, however, so thanks, Mike.Why wouldn't I have read this novel without Mike's recommendation? Well, I'm leery of any book about another culture that hints of an uplifting, inspirational tale about overcoming obstacles or whatever. I hate that shit. It's not that I hate feeling uplifted but those stories, in my eyes, tend to minimize third world hor [...]

This is a hideously beautiful, harrowing work of imagination. It's hard to tell which atrocities come from the mind of the writer and which are real. It illuminates a North Korea that seems all too real, while telling the story of a man whose feats of survival would turn him into a folk hero in any other context. This is an excellent book but not easy or light reading. ETA: I keep thinking about the fact that Jun Do chooses his own identity from the beginning. Is he ever told he's the orphan mas [...]

At a certain point I almost put this book down because I thought the only character I cared about was gone. But I was immersed and impressed a few pages later when that character was reintroduced under new circumstances. This book is a real-life 1984, interspersed with facts about North Korea. Even though many scenarios were far fetched, this work of fiction was engaging and gave me a newfound interest in North Korea; I have already bought another book about the DPRK. One of my favorite moments [...]

This very long, very dark, and highly imaginative work by Adam Johnson forces upon the reader a series of distasteful sensations, only a few of which are horror, fury, hatred, injustice, and revenge. But by the end, one also experiences hope, compassion, sincerity, integrity, and love. Thoughts surface, submerge, roil in the mind during the days spent reading this huge novel, leaving one as drained and unsettled after a session with it as if one had “eaten bitterness.” Welcome to North Korea [...]

There are many books I've loved, many writers I've admired, some whose talent has been awe-inspiring. But it's not often that I read a novel wondering “how the hell did he/she do that?” This is one of those times. How did Adam Johnson imagine his way into the dystopia of Kim Jong-Il's North Korea and create a world so real to the reader that when Americans show up, they seem oddly alien? The book is darkly comic and desperately sad, always teetering on the brink of complete absurdity but tru [...]

I have to be honest, I found this one a bit of a struggle, and I expected more from a Pulitzer prize winner. Johnson's ambition in setting his novel in the closed and surreal world of North Korea is clear. For me this never quite succeeded in being more than a series of set pieces based on the snippets of truth that have emerged, acted out by ciphers who never quite become convincing characters. This may partially be excused as a reflection of the impossibility of maintaining humanity in such a [...]

I don't understand the accolades this book has been getting. I did read it during a week of awful flu, and the slowness of getting into it may have been partly attributable to that. It's certainly clever, and Johnson is nothing if not inventive.But I couldn't get past the use of North Korea as a setting, which seemed like a meretricious trick to me. There's certainly a lot of superficial North Korean trappings, loudspeakers, prison mines, references to starvation, and the theater of Kim Jong Il, [...]

This is just flat-out brilliant. An amazing imaginative leap into an unknowable country, one that feels so granular, so meticulously envisioned, that it blew me away. There is both heft and humor here.

The book is undoubtedly written by a master word smith. It is a tour de force through a dark plot and story line. The author spent several years researching the book, including visiting the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). I find the word 'democratic extremely out of place and ironic here, as most other people would do, but won't indulge in any comment about it. Looking in from the outside with no knowledge of a people and a country, might not be the right place or time to co [...]

“In my experience, ghosts are made up only of the living, people you know are out there but are forever out of range” ― Adam Johnson, The Orphan Master's SonOne of my favorite novels of the year, and definitely my favorite novel set primarily in North Korea (I've read four others, or five). This is one of those contemporary novels like The Son by Meyer or Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang, or Udall's The Lonely Polygamist that delivers almost everything I search for in a book: origina [...]

Don't Give Up, You're Not Beaten YetAfter buying this book, I read 75 pages and gave up, thinking it was too dark and foreign for me to like. Some time after the novel won the Pulitzer Price in Fiction for 2013, I decided to start over and nearly gave up again around the same point, but decided to keep reading to page 100. Somewhere around page 85, I was intrigued, and by page 100, I could not put the book down.Now, I cannot laud The Orphan Master's Son highly enough to do it justice. Its excell [...]

Just starting this--so far it's absolutely ripping. Saw Johnson on a panel, talking about 9/11, Ten Years After, with Steve Erickson and Dana Goodyear and LA Times book critic David Ulin--and he held his own with that stellar company, and then some. Funny, when I saw him before the panel, I didn't know who he was, thought he was somebody's friend, maybe a bouncer at some kind of rough nightspot or someone who worked with prison youth-- until he sat down at the table, and started talking. Jaw-dro [...]

This novel was mesmerizing to me, like a nightmare that is so bizarre that, despite its ugliness, you don't want to wake up from for fear of missing how it will end. As dark and surreal as North Korea itself, this fascinating, compelling, 5 star read is not for wussies.The dreamlike story centers around a young man who was reared in an orphanage but who prided himself upon the fact that he was not, in fact, without parents. His father was in charge of the unit - he was the Orphan Master. His mot [...]

It is just possible that I've found the novel that come next December I'll be listing as my favorite book of the year. Go ahead -- scoff or do the eyeroll if you so choose, but this book has just set the bar for my reading year. With this novel, the prose, the characters, the story and the author's imagining of life under totalitarian rule in North Korea all combine to produce the literary equivalent of the perfect storm in my reading universe. While getting my thoughts together and perusing the [...]

I was obsessed with getting to the end of this book quickly. It wasn't because I loved reading it but because I was so sick of feeling like I was entrapped in a demented world. This story imposed scenes onto my brain that reappeared in dreams. Only great books have this power. The author opened my eyes to North Korean culture through a fictional narrative based on factual research. Throughout the story a loudspeaker was used to disseminate propaganda throughout Korean homes. Kim Jong-il, the rec [...]

That helpful widget tells me that I've read 27%. I think I've given Mr Johnson a fair chance so I have no compunction in bailing out of this one. I'm old enough to be conscious of my own mortality. The unread books I already own could probably keep me going until the Grim Reaper passes this way (which doesn't prevent me from adding to them, you know, he may not come for a while, I've certainly not invited him, and nor would I welcome him). Nearly 600 pages is a commitment I'll make if I feel it' [...]

Adam Johnson writes with authority about the essentially unknown North Korean culture and civilization. Kim Jong Il's force-fed propaganda controls the people so consummately that their identities are squeezed from their minds and replaced with a state-sponsored life and perspective. The life of a North Korean is not the pursuit of happiness or self-actualization. It is solely to survive, like an insect or a rodent. To live, you must become a shell, an unquestionably loyal nationalist.What Johns [...]

I waited a long time to read this book, I saved it for a rainy day and I was both excited and apprehensive at the same time about how I would feel reading it. I loved it, Adam Johnston writes exceptionally well and I can see why he is highly regarded and respected. Many have written about the horror’s described in this book but it’s so strangely compelling and what drew me inside this story was more so the subtle humour and absurdity of the scenes he describes and of course, the flawlessly p [...]

Após sete anos de investigação e uma viagem “organizada” à Coreia do Norte o norte-americano Adam Johnson (n. 1967) escreve “Vida Roubada”, no original “The Orphan Master´s Son” (2012) e recebe o Prémio Pulitzer 2013 para Ficção.O romance “Vida Roubada”, com o subtítulo na edição portuguesa, “Uma Saga de Amor, Esperança e Redenção no País Mais Fechado do Mundo”, está dividido em duas partes: Primeira Parte – A Biografia de Jun Do e Segunda Parte – As Confi [...]

I had misgivings as to even starting this book. A burly Caucasian fella, a Stanford professor no less, feels he can set a novel in North Korea, a place where burly Caucasian guys don't exactly have the run of the ranch; an author who names his three children: Jupiter, James Geronimo and Justice Everlasting. The book he names The Orphan Master's Son, which sounded to me like the spit'em-out (fill in the occupation)'s Daughter. And then it's also a bestseller, with over 20,000 GR ratings as I writ [...]

I realized that in my excitement after reading this novel, I had not stopped and taken the time to add a few words about the experience. I rushed to add my five stars to the mix and then stepped back. The fact is I didn't know where to start and I did not want to spoil anything. I have a feeling that getting immersed into this book without knowing anything of the plot must make it an even more dazzling literary experience. Its colorful and surreal world should be entered without any preconceptio [...]