Adam Johnson

Adam Johnson presents his new novel The Orphan Master’s Son at BorderKitchen. His work so far has shown a strong preference for the absurd and tragicomic, in the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and T.C. Boyle. When Johnson decided to use North Korea as the starting point for a new story, it was initially because of the satirical potential he saw in the eccentricity of the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il and North Korea’s Cold War-era society. But he soon abandoned that comedy scenario when he began to truly research the country and came to understand the despair and fear that shape the lives of its citizens.

The Orphan Master’s Son tells the story of Pak Jun Do, the son of a disappeared mother and an influential father who runs a camp for orphans called Long Tomorrow. Because of his loyalty and sharp intelligence, Jun Do quickly rises through the ranks of the military, though he describes himself as “a humble citizen of the most glorious nation on earth.” He becomes a professional kidnapper, constantly forced to navigate shifting rules, arbitrary violence and the bewildering demands of the regime’s leaders. Driven to the extreme, he assumes the dangerous role of Kim Jong-il’s rival in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure she did not know what dying people looked like.”

Adam Johnson is associate professor of Creative Writing at Stanford University. He has published in Esquire, Harper’s and The Paris Review, and his work has been included for four consecutive years in Best New American Voices. For The Orphan Master’s Son, Johnson travelled to North Korea in 2007. It is his third novel (translated from English by Miebeth van Horn).

Adam Johnson will be interviewed during BorderKitchen by Henk van Straten (Nieuwe Revu, Vrij Nederland).

Location: Weimarstraat 36, The Hague
Start time: 8:00 PM
Tickets: €5.00
Reservations: 070-3462355 or info@borderkitchen.nl

Reviews:

“In making his hero, and the nightmare he lives through,