The Orphan Master's Son: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)

“They never look up,” she said. “I sit out here all the time and watch them. Not one has ever looked up and caught me.”

“Your Captain fought back,” she told him. “He resisted, he wouldn’t let them take his identity. He died free.”

Real stories like this, human ones, could get you sent to prison, and it didn’t matter what they were about. It didn’t matter if the story was about an old woman or a squid attack—if it diverted emotion from the Dear Leader, it was dangerous. Jun Do needed his typewriter, he needed to get this down, this was the whole reason he listened in the dark

When the Dear Leader wanted you to lose more, he gave you more to lose.

then Jun Do remembered that he had no one that mattered to him, which was why his tattoo would be of an actress he’d never seen, taken from a calendar at the helm of a fishing boat.

Mongnan was meticulous, and the catalog was complete. This box, he suddenly understood, was the closest thing his nation had to the phone book he’d seen in Texas.

“Let me tell you about the Dear Leader,” she said. “When he wants you to lose more, he gives you more to lose.”

“Forty percent?” Dr. Song exclaimed. “Voter turnout in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is ninety-nine percent—the most democratic nation in the world! Still, the United States needn’t feel shame. Your country can still be a beacon for countries with lower turnouts, like Burundi, Paraguay, and Chechnya.”

Of course there was a zombie prison—he knew it must be true the second he’d heard it. He wished he could ask Mongnan about it—she’d know, she’d tell him all about the lobotomy factory, and she’d tell it in a way that made you certain you were the luckiest person in the world, that your lot in life was pure gold compared to others’.