Even by its own standards, North Korea’s saber-rattling has gotten intense lately. Its leaders have reneged on the decades-old ceasefire with the South; shared maps that display targets inside the US; and warned of imminent nuclear warfare. So it’s apt timing that The Orphan Master’s Son ...

Bonus Track: Kim Jong-un’s basketball obsession

Adam Johnson describes his latest novel, The Orphan Master’s Son, which follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and spy chambers of North Korea, the world’s most mysterious dictatorship. Part thriller, part story of innocence lost, part story of romantic love, the novel is a portrait of a world hidden from view: a North Korea rife with hunger, corruption, and casual cruelty but also camaraderie, beauty, and love.

To citizens around the world, what goes on above the 38th parallel is largely a mystery. Though there are no questions about the numerous human rights abuses that go on in North Korea — extreme food rationing and hunger, arbitrary violence by the state, the impossibility of traveling past the country's borders — the daily reality of living through them have gone undocumented. Through years of research, Adam Johnson attempts to convey the very real and existential crises North Koreans face with his new novel.