Kindle. Another Pulitzer price winner. There are a few famous books about North Korea around these days, including the auto-biography of someone who actually made it out (escape form Camp 14), but I still decided to go with the fiction one.
What makes it a very entertaining read, if not a great one, is the refreshing perspective of a regime immersed, but still lucid nobody. I would say is an interesting allegory of many religious people, which could be described simultaneously as brainwashed and lucid. The other interesting perspective is the narrative from the loudspeakers, the official propaganda, quite a nifty literary trick, probably that's what got him the Pulitzer.
The book as great themes, such as the two rowing girls in the ocean, and indadvertedly picking the signal from the space station. Alas, it has big flaws, that are inherent to the construction of the novel. First, like all novels that try to capture a place or time alien to the reader, the character is forced from one place to the other, in order to show us the kidnappings in japanese soil, the prison camps, the spying boats, the absurd interaction with the outside world (the trip to Texas), but again, that's the nature of these kind of books, you need the character to stitch together all these vignettes and keep us interested. the second flaw of course if the fact that the North Korean leader is quite real and quite alive. Making a fiction where good triumphs and the evil one is fooled completely doesn't sound quite realistic when the same guy is still in the news, still a Dictator in full control, it feels like wishful thinking. But again, an original book, an original perspective, and quite entertaining, I was up late several nights. Finished November 2013. Favourite quotes below:
"To survive in this world, you got to be many times a coward but at least once a hero."
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