This novel takes place in North Korea and tells one boys story as he becomes a man. I read about it from the New York Times book review, put a hold on it from the library and had a limited time to keep it so I felt rather obligated to read it. The main character seemed to lack a little bit of understanding, he was hard to connect with at first although it was fascinating learning about North Korea. Then some fairly unbelievable things happen to him. But somewhere about a third of the way through it dawns on me that this is most likely the point. The unbelievable and the lack of understanding. So i suspend my disbelief and move forward through this fantastic story. He takes a long road through many paths (Texas, Russia, impersonating a general, just to name a few), but slowly we see him change. And this change in turn challenged me.
Learning about the North Korean gulags was important to me and will become a part of my gulag reading.
Book 30
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