Adam Johnson is an American novelist and short-story writer. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2012 novel, The Orphan Master's Son, and the National Book Award for his 2015 story collection, Fortune Smiles. He is also a professor of English at Stanford University with a focus on creative writing.
""Johnson is a master builder of fictive worlds. The Wayfinder is a story of cultural erasure wrapped into a fantastical fable."" --Los Angeles Times ""[Johnson's] audacious, unruly imagination roams with confidence through the island kingdom of Tonga . . . A grand, perilous and transfiguring adventure . . . Enchanted touches are deftly threaded into the rangy storyline by Johnson's richly lyrical prose, which is also capable of handling the social dynamics of the Tongans along with the background stories of royalty and their rivals . . . A world that, like the pendant recovered at the novel's start, feels 'both ancient and startlingly new.'"" --Kirkus Reviews ""A majestic saga of political unrest in the South Pacific and a girl's quest to save her people . . . This is remarkable."" --Publishers Weekly (starred review) ""Expansive in scope, historically detailed, and totally enthralling . . . Johnson's monumental research into the history, legacy, and imprint of the Polynesian culture is evident in the meticulous detail of his narrative"" --Booklist (starred review) ""How lucky we are that Adam Johnson has ignited for us this wild, epic, and utterly captivating skein of human history. His years of immersion in the Polynesian oral tradition and research into the Tu'itonga Empire shimmer through The Wayfinder at every twist, but his rollicking storytelling leads the way."" --Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad and The Candy House ""The Wayfinder is a singular achievement. Everything you can ask for in a reading experience, and, because it's Adam Johnson, a little bit more. There are lines in here so pure and direct and lyrical and right, they make my teeth ache."" --Stephen Graham Jones, author of The New York Times Bestseller The Buffalo Hunter Hunter ""Epic in every sense of the word, this is a high wire act that burns the net below. Epic in that it swings with the same music in great works from Gilgamesh on down. Epic in scope that races across time and space until one is no different from the other. Epic in that we are swept up in a journey where not even the reader returns. In The Wayfinder myth becomes fact, magic becomes wisdom, poetry is in the mouths of birds, and a young girl sets out to remake the world."" --Marlon James, Booker Prize winning author of Moon Witch, Spider King