Fortune Smiles: Stories [J0136]

2016 - PB Nice clean condition. The National Book Award-winning story collection from the author of The Orphan Master's Son offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world. Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we don't often hear. In "Nirvana," a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In "Hurricanes Anonymous," a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.

From recent-ish Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Opened doors to empathizing with despicable people. Fantastic. Such compelling protagonists."; "His wildly imaginative and warmly sensitive fiction carries us into Louisiana right after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, then into the Berlin-Hohenschonhausen Memorial Museum, and the title story takes us to at least ten fast-food restaurants in Seoul, South Korea."; "Each story is a complete, unique world in its own right and seems like it could become its own novel. While often quite funny, the stories take the side of a tragic character seemingly overlooked by society and lead you to an unusual place of sympathy for someone who is relatively abject (i.e., "Dark Meadows" and "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine"). I loved it."