Where Spontaneity Is Almost Impossible

Adam Johnson, who visits 2/14, talked about his new novel of North Korea on the PBS NewsHour, Monday 1/30.

"It seemed, as a writer, that this was perhaps the most difficult place on Earth to be fully human, a place where spontaneity is almost impossible, where confessing your heart and your wants and desires run counter to the state and could get you in trouble, and because I found very few works from North Korean writers themselves that they weren't allowed to tell their own stories, that I thought this was something that literacy fiction could do, could fill in this void." More.

Picture: Performers at the Children's Palace in Pyongyang.