Literary Fiction · ThoughtfulSix stories: an AI president, a hurricane, a Stasi prison warden and two North Korean defectors
Fortune Smiles
by Adam Johnson
Six stories about love, loss and the ways politics reaches into private lives
A programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds comfort in a digital version of the U.S. president. A young man searches Hurricane-struck Louisiana for the mother of his son. A former warden of an East German Stasi prison denies his past, even as pieces of it arrive in packages at his door. In the title story, two North Korean defectors adjust to life in Seoul, and one cannot forget the woman he left behind.
More about this book
Who
Different people in each story, among them a programmer, a young man looking for his son's mother, a former Stasi prison warden and two North Korean defectors.
World
Louisiana after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Seoul, and the doorstep of a former East German prison warden.
What makes it different
It is a short story collection with a wide range of settings and subjects, from technology to natural disasters.
Feel
Wide-ranging and thoughtful. It won the 2015 National Book Award for Fiction and the Story Prize.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Fortune SmilesPublisher's page