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. Jun-su’s mother exchanged a glance with his father and told Jun-su to finish his food. Talk of hunger made her uncomfortable. It implied criticism of the government. Citizens were careful to speak of pain instead of hunger. The official causes of death on medical certificates attributed fatalities to food poisoning rather than starvation. The state-run media referred obliquely to a “food ration downturn.” Jun-su took it and set off towards the complex of apartments. He felt excited as he approached the unfamiliar building. He imagined that he was a spy entrusted with an important mission for the Fatherland. Two children were hanging laundry on a line suspended between two spindly trees. One of them called out to ask him where he was going. Jun-su proudly ignored him. Someone can choose to serve - this is a beautiful thing. But being made to serve - this is slavery.” At first, Jun-su’s mother stood at the doorway watching the sessions, but after a while, she left them alone.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux | Waterstones

The teachers suffered too. During a math class one day, Kang Yeong-nam, a dapper man in his fifties with a reputation as a disciplinarian, sat down suddenly in the middle of the room and turned pale. He gazed stupidly around him until the lesson ended and the baffled pupils filed out of class. Later, Jun-su saw Teacher Kang being helped to the sanatorium. 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.

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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. It was a moment that Cho Jun-su would replay in his imagination for the rest of his life. In years to come, he would joke that it was like a celestial object falling from the sky to be discovered by some bewildered nomad and made the centerpiece of a new religion. 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 by Marcel Theroux review – one man

No,” said Jun-su, puzzled that she would associate the staid teacher with such an unusual object. “Dad found it. Can you read it to me?” As he stood in line in the playground before class, Jun-su thought about the sorcerer Bong Chon-ju. He imagined him mixing potions or studying magic in a tower somewhere, far from Wonsan. Jun-su wondered about his life. When he wasn’t adventuring, what sorts of things did he do? Did he eat corn porridge for breakfast? Did he attend weekly self-criticism sessions of the Magicians’ Union? Were there portraits of the Dear and Great Leaders in the room where he studied magic? And sometimes, when Jun-su raised his hand in class to answer a question, he even pretended that he was Bong Chon-ju himself, gathering a ball of light with his fingers to cast a spell over his classmates. Not to touch it,” explained Teacher Kang calmly. He paused for a moment as though weighing a thought. “Unless you want me to.” He let this suggestion hang in the air for a moment. “There are circumstances where stimulation of the pepper can help increase vital energy,” he said. Although the teacher’s face was composed, there was something wild and excited in his eyes.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 trouble with this story,” said Teacher Kang thoughtfully, laying the book aside, “is that we know exactly what is going to happen. Whereas in real life, everything is uncertain.” Wherein the narrative style detracted something from the internality of the protagonist, it made up epically with the grand picture and utilizing the location as character. It turned out that his disloyalty had finally been exposed thanks to the vigilance of Seo Tae-il, the class representative, who had been receiving extra math lessons from the old man. The story went that Seo Tae-il had discovered a secret radio in Kang Yeong-nam’s apartment that he used to communicate with foreign spies.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux BBC Radio 4 - The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux

The great irony central to life in North Korea is highlighted by the narrative structure. Jun-su is rehabilitated and assigned to work at the elusive Office 39, a shadowy organisation whose role is to generate foreign currency for the nation. There, he concocts insurance claims to be filed in western countries, fabricating accidents to create foolproof narrative arcs that will convince the most suspicious insurance companies. His life becomes devoted to inventing such fictions, much as his youthful idle hours were devoted to constructing imaginary worlds. Theroux’s painstaking research intimately reveals the workings of North Korean society in the public and private spheres Ten-year-old Jun-su is a bright and obedient boy whose only desire is to be a credit to his family, his nation, and most importantly, his Dear Leader. However, when he discovers a copy of The Dungeon Master’s Guide, left behind in a hotel room by a rare foreign visitor, a new and co 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”.However, in an act of forgetfulness that was to have enormous repercussions, Fidel left one of his belongings in the room at the Songdowon Hotel in Wonsan that he had shared with his father.

The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux | Goodreads

Teacher Kang described the thatched huts in the moonlight, the eerie outline of a scarecrow, and the wind rustling through the trees. His eyes kept stealing enviously towards the half-empty bottle of Japanese perfume in the hand of the chambermaid who had chosen before him. 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. Growing up amid the starvation and oppression of 1990s North Korea, 10-year-old Cho Jun-su stumbles upon a mysterious game, left behind in a hotel room by a rare foreign visitor. Jun-su’s father was also in a privileged position. As a source of vital foreign currency, the hotel where he worked not only remained open, but was guaranteed a supply of food. So-dok would have been risking his life to take anything from the hotel kitchen, but because he was fed at work, there was more food to go round for Jun-su and his mother. Most days Jun-su ate two dispiritingly bland meals of soup, maize porridge, and the occasional fish. He was often hungry, but he didn’t starve, unlike many of those around him. At night, the distant cries of hungry children broke the still air like a chorus of frogs.This time while they were waiting for the needles to do their healing work, Jun-su didn’t close his eyes. “Have you read The Amazing Tincture?” he asked.