Book of the Month: The Orphan Master's Son

It doesn't arrive until tomorrow, but The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson is Green Apple's Book of the Month for January 2012. Why, you may ask?

Or here's Kevin Ryan's shelf talker:

Adam Johnson has said (I’m paraphrasing) that not every writer has a story to tell, and that not every person with a story to tell has the skill to write it, so writers must tell their stories for them. In The Orphan Master’s Son, Johnson tells the story of Pak Jun Do, raised in a North Korean orphanage. Citizens in the DPRK not only don’t enjoy freedom of the press and freedom of assembly, they truly don’t have access to freedom of thought, closed off as they are from the outside world and force fed a steady diet of propaganda. This brilliant, thoroughly-researched novel imagines life in that country, from citizens forced to “volunteer” to carry goats to the roof of their apartment building to be raised for food, to the horrors of the gulag, where dying prisoners are drained of their blood. But far from being a mere documentary of life in the DPRK, this is a hugely entertaining, often hilarious novel of assumed identity, casual cruelty, and collective delusion. Includes perhaps the greatest love scene ever to be written in jingoistic propaganda (“At length, in depth, their spirited exchange culminated in a mutual exclaim of Party understanding.”).

It arrives Tuesday, January 10, and you can buy it here or in the store. And here's the eBook version, if that's how you roll.