Which novel by Adam Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2013?

Which novel by Adam Johnson won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2013? The Orphan Master’s Son won the award.

Published in 2012, the novel follows Pak Jun Do, the son of a woman taken to Pyongyang and a father who runs a work camp for orphans. His journey moves through prisons, tunnels, spy missions, diplomatic encounters, and the rigid social hierarchy of North Korea.

Johnson combines political satire, thriller elements, romance, and psychological fiction. The novel is not presented as a straightforward documentary account; it uses an imaginative, often surreal narrative to explore propaganda, hunger, loyalty, cruelty, identity, and the human capacity to endure.

Readers sometimes confuse this winner with Adam Johnson’s short-story collection Fortune Smiles, which won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2015. The Sympathizer, another option in this quiz, won the Pulitzer in 2016, but it was written by Viet Thanh Nguyen. The Pulitzer recognized Johnson’s portrait of life inside a totalitarian state.