The vivid writing immerses the reader in a world rarely seen by the West, as we follow a young boy's journey to manhood amidst the harsh realities of life in North Korea. This thoughtful and fast-paced novel will attract anyone with an interest in history and politics, and the power that imagination and resilience has to build the human spirit.
...sometime during the summer of 1995, Cho So-dok’s eleven-year-old son, Cho Jun-su, stumbled across the book while he was fetching a mattress for a visiting relative.
It was a moment that Cho Jun-su would replay in his imagination for the rest of his life. In years to come, he would joke that it was like a celestial object falling from the sky to be discovered by some bewildered nomad and made the centerpiece of a new religion. (...) And he would stare hopelessly at the incomprehensible print on its pages for a clue to its meaning. Despite not understanding a word of it, he felt mysteriously blessed by the book’s arrival.
