Welcome To The House of Possibilities: January 2025 Book Recommendation

For a very long time, we've always been fascinated by the idea of the totalitarian regime, often romanticized into works such as George Orwell's 1984, Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games series, or Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. We imagine the massive, oppressive force of government, and exaggerate it's cruelty for the purpose of entertainment. Tyranny is framed as a boogeyman, an antagonistic entity in which the more comically evil it's portrayed, the more it captures the audience. Unfortunately, we always often use these fictional regimes (Oceania, Panem, The Republic of Gilead) as points of reference rather than real-life totalitarian regimes, like North Korea. The concept of a modern nation, held at the complete mercy of one man, isolated from the rest of the world seems like something that comes from these books, but it's a reality for the 26 million North Koreans. I'm surprised that there aren't any (western) fictional works that tries to depict the struggles of the average North Korean citizen, but that's where this month's book comes into play. 

I first heard of The Sorcerer of Pyongyang by Marcel Theroux through Kindle back in 2024, I very much do judge books by their covers, and this book, it's intersting title, and combined the blurb in the back, it did enough to convince me to put it on my reading list. 

The premise of the book is certainly interesting, a realstic take on a classic dystopian trope shaped into a work of historical fiction. The trope in question is the story in which the exceptional protagonist comes across a forbidden object/ability and uses it to fight against a dystopian society (other examples of this include The Giver by Lois Lowry, and The Book of Koli by M.R. Carey). The Sorcerer of Pyongyang is no different: It is about a North Korean boy named Jun-Su, who comes across a Dungeons and Dragons handbook left forgotten by a tourist. The book is divided into different parts, each encompassing different stages of Jun-Su's life, from a jingoistic youth, to a shy teenager, to a curious university student and beyond. Throughout the book, Jun-Su takes english classes to learn how to decipher the book in secret, while also navigating life as a citizen of the world's most brutal dictatorship. The book offers some insight into life in North Korea, drawn from testimonails by actual North Korean defectors, but there are several claims made throughout the book that I do remain skeptical of. 

The book itself is decently written, though occassionally, there are some pacing issues where the story felt like it was moving too fast, especially near the end, which did make the ending less satisfying than what I had imagined (though, it was a realistic scenario, which I give it some grace). There are also certain unexpected elements that have made me uncomfortable, which required me to pause in disbelief over what I had just read. There are certainly parts of the writing where it's obvious that this story is written by a white man with no knowledge of the Korean language. We are led to assume that all dialogue between characters is entirely in Korean, but there are aspects of conventional english usage used throughout that would not make sense, such as english-specific puns and rhymes. 

Overall, my rating for this book nets 4 stars, it's a compelling story from the beginning to end, marred by rare but glaring instaces of inconsistent writing, especially near the end. The book also requires some basic knowledge of Dungeons and Dragons in order for the reader to understand the thematic elements throughout the story, it's really important. 

Busy season for me is ramping up in the coming months, so it's highly probable that the next few monthly book recommendations will be short.