The Sorcerer of Pyongyang

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What to expect

The lecture hall was much more crowded than Jun-su had expected. There were sixty or so students in the audience. Professor Hwang gave a brief introduction about the game and when the guide appeared on the screen there was an audible gasp followed by some nervous laughter. The decadence of the game's inventors seemed obvious. Jun-su felt suddenly anxious about the political implications of what he was about to do.


'Marcel Theroux has given us a riveting and poignant story from the hidden world of North Korea. Deeply researched and powerfully imagined, his novel reveals the lives of privileged elites, gulag prisoners and ordinary men and women living in this isolated land. A thriller, a love story and an exploration of the paradoxical emotions of human beings struggling with extreme situations, this is a book by which I was irresistibly gripped' John Gray, author of author of Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life

Critics Review

Marcel Theroux has given us a riveting and poignant story from the hidden world of North Korea. Deeply researched and powerfully imagined, his novel reveals the lives of privileged elites, gulag prisoners and ordinary men and women living in this isolated land. A thriller, a love story and an exploration of the paradoxical emotions of human beings struggling with extreme situations, this is a book by which I was irresistibly gripped. I'm sure many others will find it no less compelling and enjoyable.
John Gray, author of Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life
A compulsively readable tale, all the better for being set in one of the most secretive countries in the world. In The Sorcerer of Pyongyang, Marcel Theroux captures the extraordinary atmosphere of North Korean life with wit and insight
Michael Palin
Compelling, mesmerising and eye-opening
Essential Marbella Magazine
Striking . . . Theroux mischievously crafts a pitiful, repellent character named Jimi, Kim Jong-un's Westernised playboy brother
The Times
Reading The Sorcerer of Pyongyang is an informative and entertaining way to learn about North Korea. Theroux's painstaking research intimately reveals the workings of North Korean society, in the public and private spheres . . . Theroux also writes with intelligence, compassion and an occasional quiet lyricism. Most crucially, the novel powerfully embodies the plight of North Koreans in the state's vast shadow
The Guardian
Expert, engrossing...a remarkable bildungsroman...A cleverly imagined tale of psychic repression and escape from it
Kirkus, STARRED review

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