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[title]By Adam Johnson. Random House, $26.
Citizens, here is North Korea: a bleak landscape regulated by a totalitarian regime! A country dominated by bloated, nationalistic philosophies (occasionally delivered over loudspeaker in exclamatory fashion not unlike this) and the resulting, self-deluding mythologies of its people! Ask Adam Johnson, dear citizens; his new fiction, The Orphan Master's Son, is a fever dream so grand that you may forget to pay any attention to the man behind the curtain.
As the titular figure, Pak Jun Do comes into the world with just enough power to damn others slightly less fortunate than himself. Thanks to a series of governmentally conscripted jobs that begin early in his life—kidnapper, radio spy and ambassadorial watchdog—Pak's status in society remains stable, until reversal of fortune lands him in a prison camp. Another strange sequence of events leads Pak to defeat the brutal Minister of Prison Mines Commander Ga in a fight, and shortly thereafter he assumes the identity of Ga—complete with his marriage to nationally revered actress Sun Moon and his job at the right hand of Kim Jong-il. But how long can the highly improbable charade last? Long enough to fall in love, outfox the Dear Leader and escape to freedom?
As a writer drawn to worrisome futures (evidenced in Emporium and Parasites Like Us), it's easy to see how Johnson's imagination carried him behind the iron curtain of the mysterious DPRK. The resulting novel is never less than confident and impassioned; it's also an awful lot of other things: an adventure in growing up, an episodic satire, a cinematic romance, a claustrophobic dystopia and a nail-biting thriller. Each of these narratives is engaging, and there are poignant moments, but none of these step forward to command the direction of the text. What with Kim Jong-il's recent demise and speculation about the future of the state abounding, this bold and entertaining whirligig will certainly hold a Westerner's attention; it'll be difficult to know how well Johnson's dark vision measures up to the reality, unless at some point in the future we're able to hear the thoughts of North Korean readers—or, better yet, the nation's novelists.
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