Novel of the week: The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson

(Random House, $26)

“I haven’t liked a new novel this much in years,” said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. “Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mâché creation that is North Korea and turned it into a real and riveting place that readers will find unforgettable.” Johnson’s compelling bildungsroman is the tale of Pak Jun Do, raised in an orphanage, conscripted into Kim Jong Il’s military at 14, and eventually sent on a series of outrageous missions that include kidnapping Japanese celebrities for the “Dear Leader.” It’s easy to root for Jun Do, who, after becoming a national hero, botches a spy mission in Texas and is tossed into a North Korean labor camp that doubles as an organ farm, said Sam Sacks in The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, the “eerie authenticity” of Johnson’s North Korea unsettles. “We don’t know what’s really going on in that strange place,” but “this brilliant and timely novel” offers a disquieting glimpse suggesting what it must feel like from the inside.