Boy Genius

The latest installment in the Akashic Urban Surreal series.

Boy Genius is a powerful identity satire, the picaresque odyssey of a child seeking to avenge the wrongs perpetrated on his parents. Park’s genius, born into the turmoil of post-war Korea, is used as a puppet by the South Korean government—before being banished to America. From a remote New York city ghetto, the boy wages a clandestine guerilla war against all symbols of authority. Park renders his vision of late-20th-century global culture with the bold, surreal strokes of Pynchon and the wild political sensibilities of Godard; the painful, largely unmapped narrative territory of Boy Genius creates a gripping, harrowing read.

Yongsoo Park is a Korean-American writer and independent film-maker living in New York City.