The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson

Three Stars

The Orphan Master's Son is a challenging read in structure and content. It is difficult even at the end of the book to be fully certain what is truth and what is a lie. Perhaps that is the point of this book set in North Korea. In such a regime, morality, identity, and destiny are elusive. Had I not been reading this book for a book club, I probably would have stopped reading it. This was compounded by a recent watching of the mini-series Chernobyl. What disturbed me most was not the content, but the comparisons I could draw between these two countries and the political shift in the United States. As hard as it was to read this book and watch this mini-series, I learned we do not want to participate in history repeating itself.