About this item
The National Book Award-winning story collection from the author of The Orphan Masters Son offers something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.. "MASTERFUL." - The Washington Post "ENTRANCING." - O: The Oprah Magazine "PERCEPTIVE AND BRAVE." - The New York Times. Throughout these six stories, Pulitzer Prize winner Adam Johnson delves deep into love and loss, natural disasters, the influence of technology, and how the political shapes the personal, giving voice to the perspectives we dont often hear.. In "Nirvana," a programmer whose wife has a rare disease finds solace in a digital simulacrum of the president of the United States. In "Hurricanes Anonymous," a young man searches for the mother of his son in a Louisiana devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. "George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine" follows a former warden of a Stasi prison in East Germany who vehemently denies his past, even as pieces of it are delivered in packages to his door. And in the unforgettable title story, Johnson returns to his signature subject, North Korea, depicting two defectors from Pyongyang who are trying to adapt to their new lives in Seoul, while one cannot forget the woman he left behind.. WINNER OF THE STORY PRIZE * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK . NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Miami Herald * San Francisco Chronicle * USA Today . AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post * NPR * Marie Claire * St. Louis Post-Dispatch * BuzzFeed * The Daily Beast * Los Angeles Magazine * The Independent * BookPage * Kirkus Reviews. "Remarkable . . . Adam Johnson is one of Americas greatest living writers." - The Huffington Post. "Haunting, harrowing . . . Johnsons writing is as rich in compassion as it is in invention, and that rare combination makes Fortune Smiles worth treasuring." - USA Today. "Fortune Smiles [blends] exotic scenarios, morally compromised characters, high-wire action, rigorously limber prose, dense thickets of emotion, and, most critically, our current techno-moment." - The Boston Globe "Johnsons boundary-pushing stories make for exhilarating reading." - San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
ADAM JOHNSON teaches creative writing at Stanford University. He is the author of FORTUNE SMILES, winner of the 2015 National Book Award, THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON, winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize, PARASITES LIKE US and EMPORIUM. He has received a Whiting Writer's Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His work has appeared in Esquire, Harper's, Playboy, GQ, The Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, The New York Times and Best American Short Stories. He lives in San Francisco.
