Press

What the critics say

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. A brave and impressive book.
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Johnson unleashes a big, thrilling, and fully realized talent
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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 ispure gold,a terrific novel
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Adam Johnson has managed to capture the atmosphere of this hermit kingdom better than any writer I’ve read… The Orphan Master’s Son deserves a place up there with dystopian classics such as Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World.
- Guardian

Fast-paced and intriguing..this complex, multi-voiced narrative will remind some readers of David Mitchell’s similarly inventive tale, Cloud Atlas…It is magnificent.
- Financial Times

A flamboyantly grim epic of totalitarianism…this larger-than-life, two-fisted picaresque manages to be a page-turner.. an ambitious book.
- Sunday Times

What we have here are the ingredients of an across-the-board smash hit: sympathetic characters, an exotic, unknowable setting and a plot that will carry you along more convincingly than any of the fictions used by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
- Sunday Telegraph

A clever, wildly original novel, with an ultimately thrilling plot.
- Daily Mirror

A fascinating insight into one of the world's most closed-off nations.
- Grazia

..a feat of sorcery that is audacious and utterly unsettling.. Johnson has a remarkable eye for detail..to evoke at once what it feels like to be in such a place, and how it must have felt had things been very different there, are vast feats that Adam Johnson accomplishes with ingenuity and with towering empathy.
- Irish Times

Remarkable...Mr. Johnson is a wonderfully flexible writer who can pivot in a matter of lines from absurdity to atrocity. We don't know what's really going on in that strange place, but a disquieting glimpse suggesting what it must be like can be found in this brilliant and timely novel.
- Wall Street Journal

Mr. Johnson has written a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea, but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.
- New York Times

Johnson's imaginative gifts are in full flower [in The Orphan Master's Son]
- USA Today

One image that lingered in the wake of Kim Jong Il's recent death was ordinary North Koreans overcome by grief, breaking down in the street over the loss of the ''Dear Leader'' who had terrorized them for years. Could they truly be so sad about the loss of this despot? Were they acting out of fear?... The answers Adam Johnson imagines are both vivid and chilling
- Entertainment Weekly

Adam Johnson’s novel is likely to feature among the best-of lists for 2012.. highly recommended.
- RTE Guide, Dublin