A Westerner leaves a Dungeons and Dragons book in a North Korean hotel, which ends up in the hands of a 10-year-old boy growing up during the Arduous March years.

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