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The Orphan Master's Son  By  cover art

The Orphan Master's Son

By: Adam Johnson
Narrated by: Tim Kang, Josiah D. Lee, James Kyson Lee, Adam Johnson
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Publisher's summary

Pulitzer Prize, Fiction, 2013

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea.

Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother - a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang - and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is given his first taste of power, picking which orphans eat first and which will be lent out for manual labor. Recognized for his loyalty and keen instincts, Jun Do comes to the attention of superiors in the state, rises in the ranks, and starts on a road from which there will be no return.

Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his Korean overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”

Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love. A towering literary achievement, The Orphan Master’s Son ushers Adam Johnson into the small group of today’s greatest writers.

From the Hardcover edition.

©2011 Adam Johnson (P)2011 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

  • Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
“An addictive novel of daring ingenuity, a study of sacrifice and freedom in a citizen-eating dynasty, and a timely reminder that anonymous victims of oppression are also human beings who love - The Orphan Master’s Son is a brave and impressive book.” (David Mitchell, author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
“I’ve never read anything like it. This is truly an amazing reading experience, a tremendous accomplishment. I could spend days talking about how much I love this book. It sounds like overstatement, but no. The Orphan Master’s Son is a masterpiece.” (Charles Bock, author of Beautiful Children)
“Adam Johnson has pulled off literary alchemy, first by setting his novel in North Korea, a country that few of us can imagine, then by producing such compelling characters, whose lives unfold at breakneck speed. I was engrossed right to the amazing conclusion. The result is pure gold, a terrific novel.” (Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone)

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What listeners say about The Orphan Master's Son

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Story
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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Two versions of propaganda

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

No, I was sorry that I spent time on this melodrama. I am not a big fan of melodrama, but kept thinking there would surely be something more than what was so predictable.

Would you ever listen to anything by Adam Johnson again?

Probably not.

What about the narrators’s performance did you like?

The narrators did do a great job with depicting the different characters. Can't fault them for what they had to read.

Do you think The Orphan Master's Son needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

No. No spoiler from me, but I don't think there is anything left to say.

Any additional comments?

I have read a lot about the awful situation in North Korea, and I am not averse to reading a novelized version. But this one went over the top, creating its own version of a propaganda script. If that was Johnson's intent, he succeeded, but I found myself increasingly bored with the idealized caricatures of his "good" characters.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

1,000 years of history

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

This book is effective against insomnia. Thanks, but still, the slow-moving story and lifeless narration could not convince me to continue listening after the first 1,000 hours or so. Or maybe it just felt like 1,000 hours, and that didn't even get me out of Part I. Waste of time, waste of money

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

oh, Lord

How did the narrator detract from the book?

OMG! don't get me started

Do you think The Orphan Master's Son needs a follow-up book? Why or why not?

NO!! slap yourself for suggesting that

Any additional comments?

I want my money back.

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6 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A Must Read!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This is an insightful and well written and exceptionally well read novel. I have always avoided books with multiple narrators (I don't know why), but these narrators were complementary and the reading was seamless.

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Orphan Master's Son?

It's hard to pick out a memorable or favorite part... that's not the way I assimilate a story. The insights, both factual/historical and fictionalized about North Korea were enlightening and explained a lot of the strange (what I thought were strange) reactions after Kim Jung Il's death... Re-enforced my gratitude for being born an American.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Yes... both.

Any additional comments?

This is a great read... don't miss it. I've never read anything like it.

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5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Our Dear Leader Says This is One of Audible's Best

As I write this, I am totally convinced this is one of the top five best books on Audible.

I've listened to over 500, so I have at least a fair idea of what's out there. This book is impossible to classify. It's a thriller, but so smart and well-crafted, it almost does it a disservice to paint it with that broad "thriller" brush. It's a thinking-man's tale, but it's for the thinking man that has at least a passing interest in the Land of Oz that is North Korea.

The closest comparison to this would be something like "A Prayer for Owen Meany" meets "Lolita", with a sprinkling of Donald Ray Pollock. It's gritty, eye-opening, and DARK, in all the right ways.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

A little lost at times...

Any additional comments?

Good story, was a little lost in the beginning. Not a book you can go in and out of. But it never lost me completely, and was overall good. Sometimes the narrator's "asian" voices were borderline racist sounding (think Mickey Rooney in Breakfast and Tiffany's), but otherwise narrator was good.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Unremittingly grim

While this book is well written, the story is unremittingly grim. The characters, except for the female love interest are as finally drawn as ivory cameos. However, the story itself is pedestrian and uninspired. I could guess the ending half way through the book.

I forced myself to finish the book; I guess the fact that it won a Pulitzer in 2013 is what made me want to finish it. I purchased it because it was compared favorably to Donna Tartts The Goldfinch. Both writers are excellent in fleshing out their characters. There the similarity ends. The Goldfinch had an immersive plot and a sense of forward movement and well, Joi de vrie that The Orphan Master Son lacked.

The story itself was one long didactic screed against the evil North Korean regimine. If you really want to learn about this regimine, I would suggest a good nonfiction book. If you want an enjoyable an immersive novel, look elsewhere.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

The imagination trumps the totalitarian.

This is probably the finest audio book I've ever listened to, and it the novel earns every bit of the hype surrounding it. The stunning imagination, the bejeweled detail, the immaculate voicing and structure of this novel makes it one of the best books I've read in the past ten years. You will find it horrific and entertaining in equal measure, and no piece of fiction has worked so hard to counter totalitarian terror without being dogmatic.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Haunting

This book still haunts me. Johnson makes you root for the main character while loving him and hating him, but the real genius is how he sneaks other characters into the book and makes you care about them as well. Johnson has a way of pulling empathy from his audience towards characters that you would normally hate, that would normally be the "bad guy."
I don't know anything about North Korea, so I don't know how much of the dark, dismal "facts" are true, but wow, he paints communism with the darkest of brushes and makes such a complex, and layered backdrop for the story, that North Korea becomes a character all in itself.
Genius.

The reason for the 4 stars on Performance is the sections with the "loud speaker." They were SO annoying. I know they were supposed to be. I got a clear sense of what it must be like to live under a constant loud speaker, but that part of the performance was distracting and I dreaded that part of the book.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars

nope.

I was fooled by the Pulitzer. This is a singularly uninteresting, charmless book about a topic that is currently newsworthy, but about which the author knows next to nothing. The glowing reviews must be coming from other innocent people who know even less about the topic. Very disappointing. Three stars because he got a lot of words onto a lot of pages and someone was patient enough to do a good job of reading them.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Horrifying

What was most disappointing about Adam Johnson’s story?

The realistic horror of North Korea was too much for me. I have traveled in Asian countries (not NK) and it just struck home so much I could see that this is probably an accurate portrayal of life there. It is so horrible that I couldn't take it after 1/2 of the book and just quit. This book is too real.

Probably many will like the book because of that. I just couldn't bear thinking about how these people live every day any more. No thanks.

Have you listened to any of the narrators’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Great narrator

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Great narrator, well written.

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