Quote:
Originally Posted by GlenBarrington
And I pray that this is a work of fiction.
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This review by a genuine North Korea expert addresses the question.
It's an excellent novel. The characters are so complex that I hesitate to make what could be unfair criticisms coming from someone who knows little of North Korea. But I thought that some of the characters talked more, and even acted more, like Americans than North Koreans.
I'm fanatical in my preference for realism, so it easy for my to be unfair to the book.
The Orphan Master's Son isn't meant to be pure realism.
After reading the one current book about North Korea I totally recommend,
Escape from Camp 14, I'm going to suggest that the
Orphan Master's Son may have some snippets that aren't true to North Korean life, but the reality is just as distressing. As my first link mentions, the novel's claim of prisoners being lobotomised seems an invention. So, there, the real North Korea is better. But the biggest surprise to me, moving from the novel to the non-fiction book, was the extent to which the real North Korea has little social mobility (except, for those arrested, downwards). Born a slave, die a slave.