The Ginseng Hunter

A lonely ginseng hunter living near the China-North Korea border befriends a North Korean prostitute during his monthly visits to town. As he learns about her life, he becomes aware of the repression that the North Koreans face and becomes involved in the lives of several refugees. Jason Ma reads with a gentle, poetic voice that lends grace to the novel's blend of memories, experiences, and lessons in nature. Ma's voice populates the novel with subtle yet distinct characterizations. Talarigo's story is sad yet fascinating as it reveals aspects of Chinese tradition and current headlines through the unhappy lives of its characters, creating an unforgettable portrait of contemporary life near the Tumen River. J.A.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

October 1, 2007
Set on China's fraught, ruggedly beautiful border with North Korea, Talarigo's tense, atmospheric second novel (after The Pearl Diver
) movingly dramatizes the human faces behind political oppression. A nameless middle-aged Chinese man—whose mother was Chinese and father was Korean—maintains a quiet, relatively stable life gathering the valuable ginseng root. In strict adherence to family traditions, he takes only a single root a day when he can find them; once a month he stays overnight in the city of Yanji, at Miss Wong's bordello. On one such trip, he spends the night with a young North Korean refugee who tells a harrowing story of oppression. Alternating with her story is the tale of a North Korean mother and young daughter who are forcibly separated during famine; the daughter washes up tragically at the gatherer's door, while the mother might or might not be the refugee prostitute. Talarigo hypnotically weaves the strands of these stories together against a backdrop of stunning scenery and of cruelty, creating a memorable, morally stringent tale.