一个月的时间终于读完了这本575页的普利策获奖作品。刚开始读的时候总想睡觉，不知道是因为自己太累，还是书不太吸引人。后面还是很不错的。

reading time 16.7.2018 - 17.8.2018， 页数456

这本书设置的背景时间是金正日统治时期，主人公Jun Do的经历。他在孤儿院长大，他的父亲是孤儿院院长。因为他的母亲很早之前被带到首都区，因此他父亲的一生都比较颓废。Jun Do没有见过他的母亲，他当兵，被派去日本岸边抓人，又被送到33号集中营，最后摇身变成了“国家英雄”，帮助人家逃亡到美国。。。。。。。

《The Orphan Master’s Son》is a novel published in 2012, and it was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. This is the 6th book on my Pulitzer reading list 2018. The book is divided into two parts which are titled “The Biography of Jun Do” and “The Confessions of Commander Ga”. 

It was happened in the reign of the Dear Leader Kim Jong II. Jun Do's mother was a beautiful and lovely singer. However, beautiful women in the provinces get shipped to Pyongyang, that was happened to his mother as well as other beautiful women. His dad so missed of his mum and he chose to work at a Orphanage and that was why he was constantly mistaken for an orphan for the rest of life. Because of he looks like his mother, it reminded him of the eternal hurt he felt from losing her. He could take his son's shoes in winter, or burn his son with smoking end of a coal shovel. Occasionally, a factory would adopt a group of kids, men with Chinese accents would come to make their picks. 

In the year Juxhe 85, the floods came, followed by famine. All orphans are destined for the Army eventually. "Military weeds out all the orphans and puts them through special training that makes them not have feelings when bad things happen to other people.” 

Jun Do, at 14, became a tunnel soldier. Later on officer found him and commandeered a fishing boat all the way across the sea to the coast of Japan. They were going to get someone on a beach and bring them to North Korea. After that he had opportunity to learn English. He became a national hero by biting by a shark because he “wanted to save their second mate”. He got put on a plane to visit Texas senator. Unfortunately, he was sent to prison 33 after visiting American. 

In the second part of the book, there was two narrators. One was an interrogator and one was propaganda broadcasting telling story. This interrogator was attempting to make commander’s biography by putting pieces together. The propaganda broadcasted told another story about Commander Ga. Also there was what happened to Commander Ga and how he helped his Love Sun Moon escaped from North Korea, as well as the torture he got. 

While I reading the book, always one question on my mind. How accurate of those information  about North Korea?  Author’s depiction of North Korea is based on interviews with defectors and a personal visit to there. As we all knew, you would ONLY see what they would like you to see in North Korea. All visits were tightly controlled. Same as I was reading the non-fiction book 《Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea》 by Barbara Demick which gives lots of information from interviewing North Korean defectors. 

From both books’ depiction, reader would have insight about how the living situation in North Korean - the life in the isolated place. We saw the propaganda playing a big role there. The broadcast existed in everywhere. There was no light in the evening. There was prison camp where life expectancy is six months.   The people was being monitored,  as the secret police existed everywhere, as the book 《1984》described. People cannot have own personality, it had to obey. Many people became victims from government’s tool. 

The Poverty: Although people were in poverty, they were told that the North Korea was the greatest nation on earth. Nobody needed to buy food in North Korea, like American people had to “buy food” to feed themselves.  

The Hunger: "With hungry, you could eat daisies, daylilies, pansies, and marigold, the bright faces of violas, even the stems of dandelions and the bitter hips of roses.” According to unofficially statistic, the famine occurred in North korea from 1994 to 1998 caused somewhere between 240 000 to 3 500 000 North Koreans died from starvation or hunger-related illness. 

The lies: "As Dr Song said: where we are from, stories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he’s be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.” Everyone made lies. But in North Korea, seems like you have to lie and make up stories. 

torture, interrogations, lobotomy——  too。

"On his forehead and scalp were pressure marks from the screws to the halo, a device that kept a subject from injuring his neck during the cranial administration of electricity. "

"In pain school, they'd taught him to find his reserve, a private place he could go in unbearable moments. A pain reserve was like a real reserve—you put a fence around it, attended to its welfare, kept it pristine, and dealt with all trespassers. Nobody could ever know what your pain reserve was... because if you lost your pain reserve, you'd lost everything.”   what kind of school he was in?!!!!!  

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