"A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That's the genius of "The Orphan Master's Son. " Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mache creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable. This is a novel worth getting excited about, one which more than delivers on its pre-publication buzz... I haven't liked a new novel this much in years, and I want to share the simple pleasure of reading the book. But I also think it's an instructive lesson in how to paint a fictional world against a background of fact: The secret is research...It's this process of re-imagination that makes the fictional locale so real and gives the novel an impact you could never achieve with a thousand newspaper stories. Johnson has painted in indelible colors the nightmare of Kim's North Korea. When English readers want to understand what it was about -- how people lived and died inside a cult of personality that committed unspeakable crimes against its citizens -- I hope they will turn to this carefully documented story. The happy surprise is that they will find it such a page turner." --"The Washington Post "
"Adam Johnson's remarkable novel ""The Orphan Master's Son"" is set in North Korea, an entire nation that has conformed to the fictions spun by a dictator and his inner circle...Mr. Johnson is a wonderfully flexible writer who can pivot in a matter of lines from absurdity to atrocity...We don't know what's really going on in that strange place, but a disquieting glimpse suggesting what it must be like can be found in this brilliant and timely novel." - "Wall Street Journal"
"Magnificently accomplished...Part thriller, part coming-of-age novel, part romance, " The Orphan Master's Son" is made sturdy by research...but what makes it so absorbing isn't its documentary realism but the dark flight of the author's imagination...rich with a sense of discovery...The year is young, i