Idk how accurate it was, but it very sweetly described the hardships of life in North Korea and the toll it takes on the people. So sad. But also a fun connection to D&D. A compulsively readable tale, all the better for being set in one of the most secretive countries in the world. Marcel Theroux captures the extraordinary atmosphere of North Korean life with wit and insight.” —Michael Palin, author of North Korean Journal

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux | Waterstones

What are the French like, Dad?” he asked as they walked slowly home, their record catch still twitching in the pair of plastic bags that his father was holding. When Teacher Kang returned the book, it was wrapped in a cover of the cheapest plain brown paper, so rough to the touch that it was useless for drawing. The work was hard. The children had to transplant rice seedlings from the nursery to the paddy field by hand. It meant bending double for most of the day, and the tiny plants had to be handled delicately. Like songbun,” said Jun-su, whose mother had initiated him early into the secrets of his country’s caste system.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang

It took two evenings for Bong Chon-ju to clear the village of the skeletons. In the final hut, he discovered a trapdoor that led down to a warren of underground tunnels. Clearly, they needed to be explored. Do you feel better?” said Teacher Kang, keeping his gaze fixed on the column of sums in front of him. To his parents’ puzzlement, Jun-su and Teacher Kang chatted animatedly about a village full of skeletons and underground tunnels. On the walls of Jun-su’s living room, as in every household, hung two portraits: one of the Great Leader and one of the Dear Leader. Han-na dusted them every day with a special white cloth.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang | Marcel Theroux | 9781668002667 The Sorcerer of Pyongyang | Marcel Theroux | 9781668002667

Kang Yeong-nam has done many things. He’s had a complicated life. But he knows a lot and he says he can help make you better. He says it’s important to do something…” Han-na trailed off. A vivid, uplifting, and deeply researched novel, 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 explores the power of empathy and imagination in a society where they are dangerous liabilities. The elder Kapsberger was an American citizen who had emigrated in the sixties to avoid the draft for the Vietnam War. He’d begun a new life in England as a graduate student in the political science department at the London School of Economics. Now he was a full professor and the world’s leading English-speaking expert on Juche thought, Kim Il-sung’s unique philosophy of Marxist self-reliance. However, the professor’s expertise was wholly theoretical; this was his first visit to North Korea. And, like all foreign visitors entering the country for the first time, he felt a thrilling combination of fear and curiosity as he handed over his US passport for inspection. Jun-su moved towards him. He was astonished by the shifty expression on Tae-il’s face: a look of guilt and discomfort.Arguably the most thematically interesting aspect of The Sorcerer of Pyongyang is its examination of the fictive reality of North Korea. Jun-su’s student life in Pyongyang looks idyllic: he drinks with friends, begins a secret role-playing group on campus, and starts dating a girl from the Pyongyang elite. But the maintenance of this existence requires an Orwellian doublethink. Only when it is destroyed does he become painfully aware of how he had “compartmentalised his own internal life, how he’d arranged things so his undeniable knowledge of arrests, disappearances and executions was never openly examined; so he’d never had to face difficult questions about the regime – and his own complicity with it”. Born in Kampala, Uganda, Theroux was brought up in Wandsworth, London. After attending a state primary school he boarded at Westminster School. He went on to study English at Clare College of the University of Cambridge and international relations at Yale University. Currently he lives in London and is married. His French last name originates from the region around Sarthe and Yonne in France. It is quite common in Francophone countries and is originally spelled Théroux. His paternal grandfather was French Canadian. The man’s name was David Kapsberger, and he was about to fly to North Korea as part of a twenty-strong delegation of radical academics and trade unionists.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux | Waterstones The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux | Waterstones

Tae-il inclined his head casually to Jun-su. He was fond of retelling the story on which his legendary status depended. And in truth, both the danger he’d faced and his resourcefulness had increased in subsequent tellings. Jun-su realized that the answer was yes, very much yes; but he was also worried that it was a trap. Now Jun-su started to notice other strange preparations for the visit. A layer of sand had been raked over the concrete in front of them. The two vehicles were green army jeeps, not the luxury cars that the Dear Leader would travel in. Tae-il was stunned into silence by the decisiveness of the movement. The handle of Jun-su’s mop clattered onto the floor. In "The Sorcerer of Pyongyang," we follow an 11 year-old Cho Jun-su's life from Wonsan, North Korea -- where he discovered the book that would activate his imagination and change his life drastically.The book she was referring to was the ledger in which she recorded all the shortcomings of the building’s residents. It meant there would be repercussions at the next Women’s Union self-criticism session and his mother would probably be reprimanded and made to paint something or sweep ash from the building’s boiler room. There was no point arguing. He heard the front door open. It was his mother. She sat on the end of his mattress and felt his forehead. Her cool hands smoothed his face and hair. “I bought you something,” she said, and she laid a comic book beside him and—equally wondrous—a tiny bottle of fizzy melon juice. Now he was about to turn up at Jun-su’s school and give some on-the-spot guidance. He would congratulate the students on their hard work in the countryside. He might even single out individuals for praise. Jun-su felt a pang of misgiving that he hadn’t spent more time laboring in the fields. He hoped the Dear Leader would understand that his health problems had made it impossible.