The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux, Paperback, 9781472156952 | Buy online at The Nile
Departments
 Free Returns*

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang

Author: Marcel Theroux  

A Westerner leaves a Dungeons and Dragons book in a North Korean hotel, which ends up in the hands of a 10-year-old boy growing up during the Arduous March years.

Read more
Product Unavailable

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

A Westerner leaves a Dungeons and Dragons book in a North Korean hotel, which ends up in the hands of a 10-year-old boy growing up during the Arduous March years.

Read more

Description

In the most isolated country on earth, a chance discovery shapes a young man's destiny.

Growing up amid the starvation and oppression of 1990s North Korea, 10-year-old Cho Jun-su stumbles upon a mysterious game, left behind in a hotel room by a rare foreign visitor.

As Jun-su painstakingly deciphers the rules of the game in secret, he unlocks an inner world that is at first an antidote and then a threat to the political cult that surrounds him. Over time, the game leads Jun-su on a spellbinding and unexpected journey through the hidden layers of his country, towards precocious success, glory, love, betrayal, prison, a spell at the pinnacle of the North Korean elite and an extraordinary kind of redemption.

Warm, uplifting, and deeply-researched,The Sorcerer of Pyongyang is a love story and a tale of survival against the odds. Inspired by the testimony of North Korean refugees, and drawing on the author's personal experience of North Korea, it testifies to the power of empathy and the human imagination.

Read more

Critic Reviews

Marcel Theroux has given us a riveting and poignant story from the hidden world of North Korea. Deeply researched and powerfully imagined, his novel reveals the lives of privileged elites, gulag prisoners and ordinary men and women living in this isolated land. A thriller, a love story and an exploration of the paradoxical emotions of human beings struggling with extreme situations, this is a book by which I was irresistibly gripped. I'm sure many others will find it no less compelling and enjoyable. -- John Gray, author of Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life
A compulsively readable tale, all the better for being set in one of the most secretive countries in the world. In The Sorcerer of Pyongyang, Marcel Theroux captures the extraordinary atmosphere of North Korean life with wit and insight -- Michael Palin
Compelling, mesmerising and eye-opening Essential Marbella Magazine
Striking . . . Theroux mischievously crafts a pitiful, repellent character named Jimi, Kim Jong-un's Westernised playboy brother The Times
Reading The Sorcerer of Pyongyang is an informative and entertaining way to learn about North Korea. Theroux's painstaking research intimately reveals the workings of North Korean society, in the public and private spheres . . . Theroux also writes with intelligence, compassion and an occasional quiet lyricism. Most crucially, the novel powerfully embodies the plight of North Koreans in the state's vast shadow The Guardian
Expert, engrossing...a remarkable bildungsroman...A cleverly imagined tale of psychic repression and escape from it Kirkus, STARRED review

Read more

About the Author

Marcel Theroux is the author of six previous novels, a Somerset Maugham Award winner, a National Book Award Finalist, and the winner of the Joseph Campbell award.

Read more

More on this Book

In the most isolated country on earth, a chance discovery shapes a young man's destiny. Growing up amid the starvation and oppression of 1990s North Korea, 10-year-old Cho Jun-su stumbles upon a mysterious game, left behind in a hotel room by a rare foreign visitor.As Jun-su painstakingly deciphers the rules of the game in secret, he unlocks an inner world that is at first an antidote and then a threat to the political cult that surrounds him. Over time, the game leads Jun-su on a spellbinding and unexpected journey through the hidden layers of his country, towards precocious success, glory, love, betrayal, prison, a spell at the pinnacle of the North Korean elite and an extraordinary kind of redemption.Warm, uplifting, and deeply-researched, The Sorcerer of Pyongyang is a love story and a tale of survival against the odds. Inspired by the testimony of North Korean refugees, and drawing on the author's personal experience of North Korea, it testifies to the power of empathy and the human imagination.

Read more

Product Details

Publisher
Little, Brown Book Group | Corsair
Published
7th July 2022
Pages
240
ISBN
9781472156952

Returns

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.

Product Unavailable
Browse by category