http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=The+Orphan+Master's+Son+Adam+Johnson
There was a review of this book in the paper these days which sounded weird enough in a good way (or good enough in a weird way?) to attract my attention – and a quick search tells me that it just won the 2013 Pulitzer prize as well, so it’s not just our reviewer here. The protagonist grows up as an orphan in North Korea, and is dragged through all the hardship and all the absurdity the author, an American, could come up with to describe a not-so-ordinary life there. Sounds dreary but obiously isn’t: “What we have here are the ingredients of an across-the-board smash hit: sympathetic characters, an exotic, unknowable setting and a plot that will carry you along more convincingly than any of the fictions used by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” (The Telegraph). Anyone else intrigued?
More reviews: bookish.com, or for something slightly weird in itself, threeguysonebook.com.
First suggested: May 2013
Supporter(s): Uli, Rene, Naomi, Richie, Patty, Dani