A Year in Reading: Scott Turow

Every year brings at least one book that knocks my socks off and this year that book was Adam Johnson’s The Orphan Master’s Son. It won the Pulitzer, but that came a week after I met Adam at Stanford, where he now teaches and where I was once a creative writing fellow. The raves of his colleagues and of my friend, Jim McManus, a bestselling writer in his own right, made me put it on my list. Wow! It is a book that is both beautiful and terrifying about a dystopian world that happen to exist, North Korea, where reality is whatever the Dear Leader declares it to be. It also has elements of a thriller, and surely, a deeply romantic love story. Taken on any level, it is potent and compelling reading, and fully achieved: suspenseful, heartbreaking, and grimly educational.

Scott Turow is the author of ten best-selling works of fiction, including Presumed Innocent, Innocent, Pleading Guilty, and his most recent novel, Identical. His works of non-fiction include One L, about his experience as a law student, and Ultimate Punishment, a reflection on the death penalty. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages and sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. He is president of the Authors Guild and remains a practicing attorney in his hometown of Chicago.