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. 注：该书有2个封面内容完全一致，货品随机发送

Barbara Demick is Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times and author of Nothing to Envy:Ordinary Lives in North Korea.

Demick has spent 16 years as a foreign correspondent, posted in Seoul, Jerusalem, Sarajevo and Berlin. Her reporting on North Korea has been recognized with awards from the Asia Society, the Overseas Press Club and the American Academy of Diplomacy. She joined the Los Angeles Times staff in 2001. She was previously with the Philadelphia Inquirer where she won the Polk Award for international reporting, the Robert F. Kennedy award for international reporting and was a Pulitzer finalist. Demick is the author of Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood and of the forthcoming Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea to be published by Spiegel & Grau in December 2009 and by Granta Books in the United Kingdom in 2010. Demick was born in Ridgewood, N.J. and graduated from Yale University. Before moving to Beijing, she was a visiting fellow at Princeton Univversity teaching a course on coverage of repressive regimes.