About this item
Recommended by Karen in Riverside A National Book Award finalist and National Book Critics Circle finalist, Barbara Demick's Nothing to Envy is a remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years - a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape most of us have never before seen, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive totalitarian regime today - an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, in which radio and television dials are welded to the one government station, and where displays of affection are punished; a police state where informants are rewarded and where an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life.
About the Author
Barbara Demick is a former foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times who served as bureau chief in Beijing and in Seoul. Her book, Nothing to Envy:Ordinary Lives in North Korea, won the U.K.'s top non-fiction prize, the Samuel Johnson award, in 2010 and was a finalist for both the National Book Awards and a National Book Critics Circle Awards. Demick's earlier book, Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood was republished in 2012 by Random House in the U.S.and Granta in the U.K.
