Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
by Barbara Demick
(Click here)
Book Summary Information
Author: Barbara DemickEdition: Kindle Edition
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Kindle eBook
Published: 2009-12-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 338
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Book Reviews of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Book Review: A brilliant demonstration of why politics matters
Summary: 5 Stars
If anyone ever tries to tell you that politics doesn't matter, I suggest you raise the case of North Korea. Now, I don't mean the big abstracts like "Communism" and "dictatorship" and "rogue state." I'm referring to the little things, the day-to-day realities experienced by individual people who are caught up in the unique political environment called "North Korea." Here are a few glimpses snatched from Barbara Demick's brilliant study of the subject:
* The elementary schoolteacher whose class shrank from 50 to 15 in the depth of the famine in 1997-1999 because the children had first lost the energy to walk to school -- and then simply died.
* The doctor who was instructed by her superior at a hospital not to squander scarce penicillin on a man dying of a bacterial infection because he was a "class criminal."
* The five-foot-tall man who was accepted into the North Korean Army because its height requirement had been lowered in the early 1990s due to the stunting of the younger generation.
* The young couple, desperately in love for more than a decade, who both had plans to defect to South Korea but were so schooled in distrust that neither could confide in the other -- with the result that they met again only years later in the South.
Nothing to Envy -- the title is taken from a North Korean children's song extolling the virtues of the Fatherland -- is based on Barbara Demick's work as a reporter over eight years for the Los Angeles Times. Demick made nine trips to North Korea from 2001 to 2008 and interviewed approximately 100 North Korean defectors, most of them now living in South Korea or China. Nothing to Envy revolves around the stories of six individuals from the northeastern city of Chongjin, formerly a heavy industrial center where all the factories and all the businesses closed in succession as the country's economic crisis steadily deepened over the years.
The stories told in Nothing to Envy cast a bright light on the tragedy of North Korea. They make for compelling reading. And they make it abundantly clear why politics matters.
(From Mal Warwick's Blog on Books)
Summary of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
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 citizensNothing 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.
Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects?average North Korean citizens?fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.
Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.
From the Hardcover edition.
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.
Demick takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors. Through meticulous and sensitive reporting, we see her six subjects?average North Korean citizens?fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we experience the moments when they realize that their government has betrayed them.
Nothing to Envy is a groundbreaking addition to the literature of totalitarianism and an eye-opening look at a closed world that is of increasing global importance.
From the Hardcover edition.
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