GenevaBookClub: he book deals with intertwined themes of propaganda, identity and state power in North Korea. The novel was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Jun Do is The Orphan Master's Son, a North Korean citizen with a rough past who is working as a government-sanctioned kidnapper when we first meet him. He is hardly a sympathetic character, but sympathy is not author Johnson's aim. In a totalitarian nation of random violence and bewildering caprice's poor, gray place that nonetheless refers to itself as "the most glorious nation on earth" an unnatural tension exists between a citizen's national identity and his private life. Through Jun Do's story we realize that beneath the weight of oppression and lies beats a heart not much different from our own one that thirsts for love, acceptance, and hope, and that realization is at the heart of this shockingly believable, immersive, and thrilling novel.

GenevaBookClub: Oryx and Crake is at once an unforgettable love story and a compelling vision of the future. Snowman, known as Jimmy before mankind was overwhelmed by a plague, is struggling to survive in a world where he may be the last human, and mourning the loss of his best friend, Crake, and the beautiful and elusive Oryx whom they both loved. In search of answers, Snowman embarks on a journey–with the help of the green-eyed Children of Crake–through the lush wilderness that was so recently a great city, until powerful corporations took mankind on an uncontrolled genetic engineering ride. Margaret Atwood projects us into a near future that is both all too familiar and beyond our imagining.