Our Read & Intercede Book Group finished Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick. A National Book Award Finalist it is a study of six North Korean citizens over fifteen year. The journalist’s capacity is to take the reader into the lives of these people who slowly realize that the leaders of their country have betrayed them.
The San Francisco Chroniclereview writes, “Excellent...humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad.”
John Delury remarks, “The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Nothing to Envy...Elegantly structured and written, [it] is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction.”
“At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology.”
–The Philadelphia Inquirer
This was a painful reading assignment, but the average American’s ignorance about most other countries, and particularly those enclosed behind the insane walls of repressive regimes, begs to be enlightened by excellent journalistic attempts such as this.
For next month we are reading, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galieano. Our discussion will be lead by Javier Camboni, economics professor at Wheaton College.
Torschlusspanik or not, it is good to be forced to think!
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