Skip to main content.
Bard HAC
Bard HAC
  • About sub-menuAbout
    Hannah Arendt

    “There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.”

    Join HAC
    • About the HAC
      • Our Staff
      • About Hannah Arendt
      • Our Location
  • Programs sub-menuPrograms
    Hannah Arendt
    • Our Programs
    • Courage to Be
    • Campus Plurality Forum
    • Race and Revolution
    • Virtual Reading Group
    • Citizens' Assemblies Summer Workshop
    • Affiliated Programs
    • Hannah Arendt Humanities Network
    • Democracy Through Sortition
    • Meanings of October 27th
  • Academics sub-menuAcademics
    Hannah Arendt

    “Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”

    • Academics at HAC
    • Undergraduate Courses
    • Practice of Courage Courses
  • Fellows sub-menuFellows
    HAC Fellows

    “Action without a name, a 'who' attached to it, is meaningless.”

    • Fellows
    • Student Fellowships
  • Conferences sub-menuConferences
    Hannah Arendt
    Conference 2021
      
    Watch the Recording

    Fall Conference 2021
    “Revitalizing Democracy”

    Thursday, Thursday, October 14 – Friday, October 15
    • Conferences
    • Past Conferences
    • Registration
    • Our Location
  • Publications sub-menuPublications
    Hannah Arendt
    Subscribe to Amor Mundi

    “I've begun so late, really only in recent years, to truly love the world ... Out of gratitude, I want to call my book on political theories Amor Mundi.”

    • Publications
    • Amor Mundi
    • HA Journal
    • Further Reading
    • Video Gallery
    • From Our Members
    • Podcasts
  • Events sub-menuEvents
    Hannah Arendt

    “It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.”

    —Hannah Arendt
    • HAC Events
    • Upcoming
    • Archive
    • Citizens' Assemblies Summer Workshop
  • Join sub-menu Join HAC
    Hannah Arendt

    “Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians.”

    • Join HAC
    • Become a Member
    • Subscribe
    • Virtual Reading Group
    • Join HAC
               
  • Search

Amor Mundi

Amor Mundi Home

Book Review by Wyatt Mason

01-31-2012

The Hannah Arendt Center's Senior Fellow, Wyatt Mason, has a book review in the February 6, 2012 issue of The New Yorker.

He reviews, The Orphan Master's Son, a novel about life in totalitarian North Korea penned by Adam Johnson:

Intention, significance, purpose: the design of the powerful first part of the novel is full of such qualities, confining the reader within the narrow channel of Jun Do's consciousness as he is moved like a chess piece by the hidden hand of the state.  Johnson, an American novelist whose research for the book took him to North Korea, does a superb job of conjuring the almost surreal particularities of the country, its cities that go dark at nightfall, as the nation's generators go silent until dawn. Grass sprouts from the rooftops of tall apartment buildings and lambs can be found grazing on these aerial pastures, the occasional ill-starred creature crossing the border of its tiny world and plummeting into traffic only to be stolen away almost immediately by a hungry citizen.

You can read the full review behind the firewall at The New Yorker online if you have a subscription, or in the magazine which is on newsstands now.

Footer Contact
Contact HAC
Bard College
PO Box 5000
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504
845-758-7878
[email protected]
Join the HAC
Become a Member
Subscribe to Amor Mundi
Join the Virtual Reading Group
Follow Us
Image for Twitter
Image for Facebook
Image for YouTube
Image for Instagram