The Boy Who Escaped Paradise

Book excerpt: An astonishing story of the mysteries, truths, and deceptions that follow the odyssey of Ahn Gil­mo, a young math savant, as he escapes from the most isolated country in the world and searches for the only family he has left An unidentified body is discovered in New York City, with numbers and symbols are written in blood near the corpse. Gil­mo, a North Korean national who interprets the world through numbers, formulas, and mathematical theories, is arrested on the spot. Angela, a CIA operative, is assigned to gain his trust and access his unique thought-process. The enigmatic Gil­mo used to have a quite life back in Pyongyang. But when his father, a preeminent doctor is discovered to be a secret Christian, he is subsequently incarcerated along with Gilmo, in a political prison overseen by a harsh, cruel warden. There, he meets the spirited Yeong-ae, who becomes his only friend. When Yeong-­ae manages to escape, Gil­mo flees to track her down. He uses his peculiar gifts to navigate betrayal and the criminal underworld of east Asia—a world wholly alien to everything he's ever known. In The Boy Who Escaped Paradise, celebrated author J. M. Lee delves into a hidden world filled with vivid characters trapped by ideology, greed, and despair. Gil­mo's saga forces the reader to question the line between good and evil, truth and falsehood, captivity and freedom.