The Boy Who Escaped Paradise – A Novel

An unidentified body is discovered in New York City, with numbers and symbols are written in blood near the corpse. Gil-mo, 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 Gil-mo used to have a quiet 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, Gilmo meets the spirited Yeong-ae, who becomes his only friend. When Yeong--ae manages to escape, Gil-mo 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. Gil-mo's saga forces the reader to question the line between good and evil, truth and falsehood, captivity and freedom.