The Sorcerer of Pyongyang

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Teacher Kang showed him a map of the village where he’d drawn the huts, the well, the barns, and the surrounding paddy fields.

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

I must admit that I'm not familiar with dragons and dungeons roleplaying game and I still don't understand what "sorcerer" has to do with this story, but I overall enjoyed this novel more than I had expected.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang

Beside the road, a long banner declared: WE WILL SAFEGUARD WITH OUR LIVES THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE WORKERS’ PARTY OF KOREA.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux | Waterstones

As the officer waved Kapsberger through, he pressed a concealed button under his desk to ensure that the customs men would search the professor’s luggage with extraordinary care.Jun-Su is a ten-year-old North Korean boy who discovers a copy of The Dungeon Master's Guide, left behind by a foreign guest, in the hotel where his father works. The discovery of the book and the strange, fantastical new world it opens for him will forever alter the course of his entire life. From now on, after each session with the needles, Jun-su and Teacher Kang played the House of Possibility. There’s more to it than that,” said Jun-su. “He eats rats and makes shoes out of birch bark.” Trying not to disturb the needles in his chest, Jun-su slid his hand under the mattress to retrieve the mysterious book. He passed it to Teacher Kang. “It’s in here,” he said. For the remainder of the stay in the countryside, Jun-su helped in the farm’s small noodle factory. Sometimes he collected eggs from the henhouses. These were distributed to the workers at the collective farm. The schoolchildren ate the food rations they’d brought with them from the city.

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

Through palpable tension balanced with glimmers of hope, Hoover beautifully captures the heartbreak and joy of starting over. Marcel (Raymond) Theroux is a British novelist and broadcaster. He is the older son of the American travel writer and novelist, Paul Theroux. His younger brother, Louis Theroux, is a journalist and television reporter. In 1995, an 11-year-old boy in North Korea, Cho Jun-su, stumbles across a strange, foreign book that will change his life. Helped in private by a teacher, Jun-su learns that it is a Dungeon Master's guide. Dungeons and Dragons opens up a whole new world of make-believe and imagination for the boy. Lie still,” snapped Teacher Kang. “I studied medicine with Kim Bong-han. He was so smart the Great Leader put him on a stamp. If you work hard and do as your teacher says, they may put you on a stamp one day.” 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.

Jun-su found himself drifting into the relaxed state that the needles always brought on. Teacher Kang’s voice sounded like a wasp buzzing inside a glass. Jun-su became so sleepy that he could no longer concentrate. The buzzing stopped and he grew suddenly alert in case the old man had designs on his pepper. At other times, Dr. Park would sit on the cot and Jun-su would tell her the stories from comic books. Often she seemed distracted or uninterested. But when he told her The Blizzard in the Jungle he made the central character a heroic female doctor, and he could tell she liked that one. Seo Tae-il had revealed this to his father. Under questioning, the teacher had admitted to many other terrible crimes. The death sentence was undoubtedly just. Seo Tae-il received a special commendation from the party and his status in the school rose to previously inconceivable heights. There was even an article about him in the Rodong Sinmun. At first it was just one boy tittering behind his hand; soon his fit of giggles spread to his neighbors, grew louder, and swelled into an uncontrollable wave that seemed to engulf Jun-su. He stopped his speech and looked at his giggling classmates in bafflement. He couldn’t understand the reason for the laughter.

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

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 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. A soldier with a rough voice read loudly from a piece of paper. “Kang Yeong-nam, the people’s court finds you guilty of spying. The sentence is death.” I went into this book practically blindfolded. Again…and yes I love aesthetics, the cover sold me without needing more to buy it apart knowing it was set in North Korea.Around him there was a babble of concerned voices. Jun-su was confused. He couldn’t understand anything they were saying. That would be the simple one-sentence description of this novel, but it’s really so much more than that. More than a coming-of-age story, too. This novel encompasses an entire life, a life lived in the strangest most isolated and (possibly) most terrifying country on Earth. It will work for different readers differently, I’m sure, but either way it WILL work. It’s such an emotionally engaging story with such a strong likable protagonist trapped in a seeming procession of impossible situations that can only spring from a place that (much like D&D) makes its own rules and is guided by its own (terrifying) logic. After a sudden descent and an abrupt landing that left the tour party shaken, the passengers made their way down the boarding ramp and towards the boxy Soviet-style terminal.