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Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (eBook) by Barbara Demick $2.99

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AuthorBarbara Demick
PublisherRandom House
Publication dateDecember 1, 2009
Print length338 pages
Customer Reviews4.6⭐ / 10,799 ratings

An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a "tour de force of meticulous reporting" (The New York Review of Books), with a new afterword that revisits these stories—and North Korea more broadly—in 2022, in the wake of the pandemic

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST

In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il (the father of Kim Jong-un), and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population.

Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them.

Praise for Nothing to Envy

"Provocative . . . offers extensive evidence of the author's deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details."The New York Times

"Deeply moving . . . The personal stories are related with novelistic detail."The Wall Street Journal

"A tour de force of meticulous reporting."The New York Review of Books

"Excellent . . . humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad."San Francisco Chronicle

"The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy. . . . Elegantly structured and written, [it] is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction."—John Delury, Slate

"At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology."The Philadelphia Inquirer

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Created Yesterday at 02:32 PM by phoinix | Staff
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Joined Jan 2010
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onlinehuman
Yesterday at 03:07 PM.
Yesterday at 03:07 PM.
This book is incredible
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Joined Nov 2023
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TenderGazelle3759
Yesterday at 05:23 PM.
Yesterday at 05:23 PM.
According to bad reviews on Amazon, this book does not talk about North Korea in proper historical & global context. The book also has factual errors.

North Korea has one of the most strict governments in the entire world, but I think the Saudi Arabia government is more oppressive (especially Saudi Arabia & NATO's devastating policies against Yemen), Israel's policies toward Palestine are vastly more oppressive, there is vastly more corruption & incompetence throughout Sub-Saharan African governments, etc.

North Korea's economy would be many times better if North Korea was not under severe sanctions & threat of invasion by the USA. Modern North Korea was built from the ashes of Japan's brutal imperialism & the even more brutal Korean War (in which 20% to 40% of North Korea's population was killed &/or injured by the US-led UN alliance).
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