Photo by Sam Sonyee
Adam Johnson won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for The Orphan Master’s Son, his absorbing, eye-opening novel set in Kim Jong-il’s North Korea. Now Johnson is out with an expansive collection of short stories entitled Fortune Smiles: Stories, a deeply affecting and perceptive compilation that was recently shortlisted for the National Book Award. With fascinating tales spanning the globe from post-Katrina New Orleans to contemporary Berlin, Johnson has woven together a tapestry of narratives that focus on love, loss and life-changing decisions made by characters who are peculiar, disturbed and above all else, desperately human.
Each of these six stories, every one long enough to be a stand-alone novella, encapsulates both humor and sadness, with despairing male protagonists at their center. In “Nirvana,” the narrator in a slightly futuristic world turns to a hologrammed president for comfort; in “Hurricanes Anonymous,” a man finds himself with his life turned upside down following the devastations of hurricanes Katrina and Rita; and in the title story, Johnson follows two North Korean defectors who are struggling to assimilate to a new life in Seoul. In Fortune Smiles, Johnson has beautifully captured the moral struggles of humanity with courage, insightfulness and precision.
Johnson serves as a professor of English at Stanford University. In addition to his award-winning novel The Orphan Master’s Son, Johnson is the author of the novel Parasites Like Us and the short story collection Emporium. Adam Johnson will appear at Boswell Book Co. at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 23.
Book Happening:
Wisconsin Book Festival
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Oct. 22-25
Various Locations
Madison, Wis.
This weekend Madison will host the Wisconsin Book Festival, a four-day celebration of books that will feature more than 70 events at locations across the city. A diverse group of authors is scheduled to appear, from National Book Award-winner Timothy Egan (The Big Burn) and New York Times bestselling author Azar Nafisi (The Republic of Imagination) to award-winning children’s author Kevin Henkes (Waiting) and Wisconsin Poet Laureate Kim Blaeser. Information can be found online at wisconsinbookfestival.org.
