THE ORPHAN MASTER’S SON by Adam Johnson (First published by Random House, 2012)
This is the story of a survivor who has nothing to live for.
Pak Jun Do is a North Korean John Doe and by all accounts a model citizen of a shitty nation.
Adam Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel illustrates that when living within ideological systems it is too easy to get stuck between a rock and a hard place. Hegemony functions to make any way of life appear to be ‘normal’ and/or beyond reproach.
Johnson asks plenty of loaded questions such as to whether it is nobler to be devoted to the ‘dear leader’ (Kim Jon II) of North Korea than to cling to an often elusive American dream. No middle way is offered. Continue reading
This engrossing novel follows the parallel lives of a young German boy (Werner Pffnig) and a young French girl (Marie Laure) caught up in the mayhem and confusion of the second world war.
After her two previous bestsellers, Donna Tartt is in the enviable position of being able to call all the shots with any publisher.
This Pulitzer Prize winning book is “the story of how the world swerved in a new direction” when enlightened thinkers began to reject religious delusions in favor of humanist principles. The book’s subtitle is , according to which edition you read, either ‘how the Renaissance began’ or ‘how the world became modern’.
