When Adam Johnson first started researching North Korea, he was writing an ironic story called “The Best North Korean Short Story of 2005,” a playful take on how Kim Jong Il dictates a single ridiculous narrative for a country of 23 million. But once Johnson read the heartbreaking firsthand stories of North Korean defectors, he abandoned his original idea and began instead a novel about an average citizen coming of age during the famine. He also felt he had no choice but to travel there himself, and experience life in one of the most isolated countries on earth. There, he discovered – despite the screening of his three government minders – a place where every woman wears the same color lipstick, starving families forage for chestnuts in trees, pedestrians are randomly scooped up for “volunteer” labor, and loudspeakers blast nonstop patriotic anthems.

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