The Orphan Master's Son

Hearing one of the other members of my library book gossip group talking about Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son (#310) prompted me to get hold of it and read it myself.  No wonder it won this year's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction!  It was absolutely riveting.

The central character, Pak Jun Do, is the eponymous Orphan Master's son, raised by his father in the North Korean Long Tomorrows orphanage after his beautiful mother, a singer, is stolen away to Pyongyang.  Orphans in North Korea are universally despised and objects of suspicion.  Jun Do soon finds himself parceling out the Revolutionary Martyr's names to the new arrivals, deciding whom to assign the worst jobs to, and who has first shot at eating and sleeping near the warmest part of the room.  If you're thinking of any comparisons to Annie's orphans, and their hard knocks life, think again.  These orphans are the cannon fodder for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.  How Jun Do manages to even survive at all is remarkable, but through a series of fortuitous circumstances and remarkable adventures, he ultimately assumes the identity and life of a close confederate of Kim Jong Il, the Dear Leader.  His biography as the counterfeit Commander Ga is chronicled by an operative of Division 42, an interrogator for the State who is determined to wring every last drop of truth from the former Jun Do.  What is most astonishing about Jun Do/Commander Ga is that he never allows them to take away from him the essence of his humanity.

The insight into everyday life in North Korea is amazing, and I kept wondering as I was reading it how on earth Mr. Johnson ever managed to get close enough to North Koreans to research this book.  It certainly didn't leave me with warm fuzzy feelings towards the power apparatus of this secretive country.  But then again, as the book points out, the North Koreans apparently think we Americans are starving, that the urine-soaked homeless litter our streets and that all of us are left floundering to make our own decisions about every little thing, and that we must pay for everything we need for food, clothing, shelter and medical care.  (So they do get one or two things right!)  It's a nightmare vision of what the world could become if Kim Jong Un has his way, and scarier in its own way than anything Stephen King could ever imagine.  Highly recommended.