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Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

from the reading room, February 18, 2012

In the midst of our country’s current challenges and frustrations, Barbara Demick’s “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea”” is a timely reminder of how immensely fortunate we are to live in an American democracy. It is a book so extraordinary, so captivating that I literally could not put it down. Little wonder that it is not only a recent National Book Award finalist, but a book club favorite as well.

Focusing on the stories of six defectors who lived in North Korea from about 1900 to 2005, Demick movingly recounts their agonized struggles to survive through the final years of Kim il Sung and the cataclysmic famine that decimated the population. It horrifies me to realize that even today, as I worry about gaining too much weight, deciding what TV program to watch, or which brand of chicken to buy, millions of North Korean citizens exist without food for body or spirit in “the world’s most repressive regime.”

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