Center for the literary arts in New York State
A POLYNESIAN EPIC
Adam Johnson
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, October 28, 2025
University at Albany
Recital Hall, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222 See map
Adam Johnson, major contemporary novelist, received the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel of North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son. Writing in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani called it, “a daring and remarkable novel, a novel that not only opens a frightening window on the mysterious kingdom of North Korea but one that also excavates the very meaning of love and sacrifice.” (Read the review.)
He also received the National Book Award for his 2015 story collection, Fortune Smiles. His new novel is The Wayfinder (2025), a historical epic about a girl from a remote Tongan island who embarks on a risky seafaring journey across a vast ocean empire built on power, consumption, and bloodshed. Born in South Dakota, Johnson is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.
Cosponsored by the English Department’s Creative Writing Program and Young Writers Project, the Writing & Critical Inquiry Program (WCI), the Honors College, and the Indigenous Student Association.
from the publisher
... an epic journey into the heart of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship.
Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother — a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang — and an influential father who runs a work camp for orphans. Superiors in the North Korean state soon recognize the boy’s loyalty and keen instincts. Considering himself “a humble citizen of the greatest nation in the world,” Jun Do rises in the ranks. He becomes a professional kidnapper who must navigate the shifting rules, arbitrary violence, and baffling demands of his overlords in order to stay alive. Driven to the absolute limit of what any human being could endure, he boldly takes on the treacherous role of rival to Kim Jong Il in an attempt to save the woman he loves, Sun Moon, a legendary actress “so pure, she didn’t know what starving people looked like.”
Part breathless thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, The Orphan Master’s Son is also a riveting portrait of a world heretofore hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, stolen moments of beauty, and love.
reviews
“Imagine Charles Dickens paying a visit to Pyongyang, and you see the canvas on which [Adam] Johnson is painting here... This is a novel worth getting excited about.”— The Washington Post
“An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.”—Pulitzer Prize citation
“Rich with a sense of discovery . . . The Orphan Master’s Son has an early lead on novel of [the year].”—The Daily Beast
“[A] ripping piece of fiction that is also an astute commentary on the nature of freedom, sacrifice, and glory.” — Elle
(Photo credit: Justice Johnson)
