Fantasy and authoritarian reality blend in Marcel Theroux's 'Sorcerer of Pyongyang'

British American novelist and broadcaster, Marcel Theroux, is the author of several books including "Far North" which was a finalist for the National Book Award and Arthur C. Clark Award. Theroux is a featured author at the Savannah Book Festival where he will discuss his latest novel, "The Sorcerer of Pyongyang."

Theroux’s new book is a highly researched and detailed look at the secretive hermit kingdom of North Korea. The story begins in the 1990s during a severe famine when a 10-year old boy named Cho Jun-Su comes across a "Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master Guide" left behind by the son of an American tourist. The towering red demon on the cover both frightens and intrigues Jun-su, although he is more frightened by what might happen to him if the book were discovered since possession of forbidden material could land him in prison, or worse.

Q&A with Savannah Book Festival leader: Happy to bring 'labor of love' back to Savannah

Savannah author at SBF: Carolyn Prusa isn't wrong — 'None of this Would Have Happened if Prince Were Alive'

Another local name at SBF: George Dawes Green explores local hidden history in his latest novel, 'Kingdoms of Savannah'

Jun-Su is unwaveringly devoted to his family, his country, and his Dear Leader, Kim Jong-Il, but the allure of the Dungeon Mater Guide leads him down a path that frees his creative mind and changes the way he sees the world around him. With the help of an English speaking teacher, Jun-Su slowly and painstakingly translates the book, which not only helps him build a rich inner life, but improves his vocabulary enough to win a major poetry prize that subsequently vaults him into the upper crust of North Korean society.

As Jun-Su grows up, with the Dungeon Masters Guide as a guiding force, he falls in love, is imprisoned, finds himself in the strange orbit of the most powerful family in the nation, and eventually builds a new life.

Theroux was inspired by his love for Dungeons & Dragons as a youth, the real-life community of North Korean refugees that live near his home in London, and his work as the host of the BBC documentary series “Unreported World” in which he travels to neglected parts of the globe to uncover stories rarely aired by mainstream media.

One episode of “Unreported World” (which is available on YouTube) took Theroux to North Korea.

“I was so excited to go,” said Theroux over Zoom from London. “It was a weird time because there was a kind of thaw. There was a moment where more people were going to North Korea — journalists were going to North Korea. There was a bromance burgeoning between President Trump and Kim Jong-Un and people were wondering how far this would go.

It turned out to be a brief window, but Theroux and his cameraman were allowed into the country and spent eight days traveling around the country.

“It was fascinating,” said Theroux. “Of course, we weren’t able to penetrate anything. We were shepherded by minders as everyone is. We didn’t talk to any ordinary people. We were mostly corralled in our hotel. We had to really fight just to get outside and get the general shots of the city that you would expect to make a TV program. You need so many images. Beforehand I was worried. I’d heard horror stories about people being driven around in buses with the curtains shut and people couldn’t even film out of the bus. I was thinking if that’s case we can’t even make a film. They were more relaxed than that, but they still engineered it so that we had no time to ourselves to poke our noses into things.”

The experience had Theroux questioning what went on the heads of the North Korean people who were so careful and guarded around him during his visit? What are the inner lives of people who grow up in a totalitarian country?

More:Author Taylor Brown continues to put his heart out for everyone to see with 'Wingwalkers'

Having studied Russian and spent time in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, Theroux had some semblance of an idea what it must have been like for its citizens.

“The first night we woke up in the hotel in Pyongyang, there was a trade fair going on in Pyongyang, so exhibitors from friendly countries had been invited to sell things, so it was essentially Chinese and Russians,” recalled Theroux. “There were Russians of about my age and I was chatting with them. I could see they were having an experience a bit like mine but more intense. I visited Moscow in 1983 and Pyongyang really took me back to that moment of being in a ‘socialist utopia’ with the propaganda posters and the people wandering around the slightly ambient atmosphere of oppression, but also a strange aesthetic that looked like it was all designed by one person. I could see the Russians were quite bummed out, because they were thinking, ‘This is the country I grew up in.’ They looked a bit nostalgic.”

“I don’t want to make light of it. North Korea is a terribly oppressive country, as the Soviet Union was in the 1980s, but for the people who are there it’s also home.”

In the novel, Theroux describes Pyongyang in the 1990s as looking like rows of gray matchboxes standing on end. Those same buildings are now painted in bright pastel colors.

“It’s actually oddly beautiful,” said Theroux. “I was thinking it looked like a Marxist Wes Anderson designed the entire thing...This is one single demented vision and there’s something amazing about it. It’s designed to make you feel awed, like the Emerald City. It’s designed to make visitors go, ‘Wow! This is the most advanced city on Earth.’ So Cho Jun-Su could really think that.”

More:One of Savannah's favorite bookstores is expanding into Starland to become 'locals spot'

There is a bitter sweet quality to the portrayal of North Korea and its oppressed citizens. Theroux did much of his research speaking to North Koreans who escaped the country and now live in England. It’s a cultural transition that is often difficult for many of them.

“Talking to North Koreans, I think it’s really complicated for people to leave that world because they are ambivalent,” said Theroux. “They know that it was terrible, but they also had really good times there. I think one of the reasons there are North Koreans in South West London is that I think it’s tough for North Koreans in South Korea. We know that a lot of North Koreans who move to South Korea have a really tough time adjusting. They have a tough time leaving home, they have a tough time because they have low status in society, there’s a prejudice against them, their work qualifications don’t count. You could have been a college professor in North Korea and then in South Korea you don’t have anything comparable to that job. It’s really rough and people do end up wanting to go back.”

Jun-Su had the Dungeon Masters Guide to help him disrupt his system of thought, but there are other ways North Koreans illegally expand their world-views.

“It’s about having an internal life in a place where everything is so controlled,” said Theroux. “One of the ways people are trying to influence what goes on in North Korea is send flash drives with South Korean soap operas, or books, or copies of the Bible, anything. I think clearly the North Korean government also realizes the danger of people having an inner life because they do everything they can to stop their citizens from seeing the internet. You can be executed for watching South Korean soap operas in the North.”

Even for Theroux, Dungeons & Dragons was an inner life changing experience.

“It was such an amazing experience to get this book,” Theroux said as he held up his beat-up copy of the "Dungeon Master’s Guide" to the camera. “I was flipping through it the other day and reading the section on alignment. I remember as kids, my friend and I when we were reading about lawful evil and chaotic good, I still think it’s a really brilliant formulation of what a person can be like. I remember trying to figure out what our friends were. I had a long lasting impact on me and I can only imagine growing up in an even more un-free environment what a liberating, and at the same time potentially dangerous thing it could be.”

IF YOU GO

What: Savannah Book Festival: Marcel Theroux

When: Saturday at 3:15 p.m.

Where: Baptist Church Fellowship Hall, 223 Bull St.

Cost: Free and open to the public

Info: savannahbookfestival.org

This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Journalist Marcel Theroux discusses North Korean life in new book