The release date for the English version of 'Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea' by
Barbara Demick is Dec 2009. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
Nothing to Envy chronicles the lives of six North Koreans throughout a turbulent fifteen years, including the passing of Kim Il-sung, the unchecked ascent to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the catastrophic effects of a widespread famine that claimed the lives of one-fifth of the country's population.
Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick transports us to a world most of us have never seen before, vividly describing what it's like to live under the most oppressive totalitarian regime in existence today: an Orwellian society that chooses not to use the Internet, where radio and television dials are fixed to a single government station and displays of affection are frowned upon; a police state where informants are rewarded and a casual comment can land someone in the gulag for life.
Demick brings us far within the nation, outside the purview of official censorship. Her six subjects—average North Korean citizens—fall in love, create families, foster aspirations, and fight for survival, all of which are shown via painstaking and sympathetic reporting. We see, one by one, their realisation that their government has deceived them.
Nothing to Envy is a ground-breaking work of totalitarian fiction that offers a startling new perspective on a restricted society that is becoming more and more significant on a worldwide scale.