Marcel Theroux is the author of six previous novels, a Somerset Maugham Award winner, a National Book Award Finalist, and the winner of the Joseph Campbell award.
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