The Orphan Master’s Son is a disorienting and powerful read. Set in the brutally repressive regime of Kim Jong Il’s North Korea, it follows the life of Pak Jun Do from the orphanage to the lethal games of dictatorship politics. Johnson’s novel is confronting and absurd by turns, making for a jarring read that initially seems a bit much. On reading his description of his own research and experiences in North Korea however, it seems a more traditional fiction mightn’t have encapsulated the bizarre reality of life in the DPRK.

David Mitchell has praised the book, and fans of his Cloud Atlas will definitely find something here; the disengaged, formal voice, abrupt changes in perspective, and especially the moving portrayal of an individual trying to forge and cling to meaning in a distorted world.

The dystopia Johnson presents, though fictive, is nevertheless a disturbing and important political insight into a country that is too often forgotten by the general public except as caricature. Between the shock of prison camps, famine and torture, and the ridiculous farce of much of the country’s culture and diplomacy, Johnson constructs complex relationships between his characters, whether of duty, fear or love, that transcend the facts of their situation.

The Orphan Master’s Son, though readable and engaging, is occasionally a bit slow and hard going. Given the enormity of trying to both understand and critique a notoriously private culture however, Johnson’s care seems well spent. Jolting narrative and a sense of surrealism can be distancing, and often a character’s lack of emotion threatens to disengage the reader; but the novel sees in North Korea ‘a grand trauma narrative’ played out on countless individual citizens, where continuity, reflection and self-expression are constantly sacrificed to the ruthlessly pragmatic goal of survival.

Imogen Dewey is from Readings Carlton