Stanford University English Professor, Adam Johnson, Wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction!

Adam Johnson  (AP Photo)

Congratulations to Adam Johnson for winning the Pulitzer Prize yesterday for his novel The Orphan Master's Son!

In an article titled Stanford professor Adam Johnson wins Pulitzer Prize for the Silicon Valley Business Journal, Azadeh Rongere writes the following:

The Pulitzer committee claimed the book, based in North Korea, to be "an exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart."

Azadeh Rongere also wrote the following in the same article mentioned above:

In an interview at the end of his book, Johnson said, "Much is written about the political, military, and economic aspects of the DPRK, but it was always the personal dimension that interested me. I wondered how families huddled under such repression and how people maintained their identities against the tide of propaganda, and whether lovers, despite the dangers, shared their intimate thoughts. So, from the beginning, my goal in this book was to create a single character that felt fully human to me."

Hardback Edition

Based on the description of The Orphan Master's Son, I'm interested in reading this novel. I find reading books told through a 'personal dimension' to be more engaging to read than from a 'political, military, or economic' perspective.  

Learning about other people's personal life experiences is more captivating, than reading about something that doesn't touch on the human element/personal dimension. People's lives are touched by various factors/life events and it is these life changing events that shape the world around us whether it be for political, military, or economic reasons and so on.