The Award Tally
FictionNonfiction

Wishlist

Saved in this browser only - it isn't synced to your other devices.

Back to the full ranking
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea cover

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Barbara Demick

1

award won

20

score

#138 of 3,809 books · #6 in Politics & Current Affairs

Won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (2010). Also shortlisted or longlisted for 2 other awards.

North Korea is Orwell's 1984 made reality: it is the only country in the world not connected to the internet; Gone with the Wind is a dangerous, banned book; during political rallies, spies study your expression to check your sincerity. After the death of the country's great leader Kim Il Sung in 1994, famine descended: people stumbled over dead bodies in the street and ate tree bark to survive. Nothing to Envy weaves together the stories of adversity and resilience of six residents of Chongin, North Korea's third largest city. From extensive interviews and with tenacious investigative work, Barbara Demick has recreated the concerns, culture and lifestyles of North Korean citizens in a gripping narrative, and vividly reconstructed the inner workings of this extraordinary and secretive country.

Buy this book at AmazonAd
Publisher
Granta Books
ISBN-13
9781847081414
Topics
North KoreaTotalitarianismFamine and survival

Other awarded books from Barbara Demick

If you liked Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, you could also like these

Similar Topics