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.

Nothing to Envy: Love, Life and Death in North Korea

Barbara Demick

Fourth Estate

WINNER OF THE 2010 SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION What if the world imagined by George Orwell in Nineteen Eighty-four was real? What if everything around you was black and white except for the red letters on propaganda signs? Where spies like Orwell's thought Police studied your facial expressions during political rallies to make sure you were sincere in your expressions and your thoughts? If you couldn't turn the dials of your radio away from the government station? In fact, there is such a place: North Korea, the only country not connected to the Internet by choice. Ruled over by a dictator, visible only in carefully controlled images, it's a mysterious, even sinister country. But it's also a place where 22 million people live, work, and dream of a different life. Journalist Barbara Demick spent a decade covering North Korea's strange politics and regulations. then one day she met a young woman defector, Mi-ran, who told her about growing up there; about the cinema she used to go to when the country still had electricity, and about the teenage romance which blossomed there. through Mi-ran's story Demick glimpsed another, more human side of North Korea. In Nothing to Envy, Demick re-traces the life of Mi-ran and of five other North Koreans, taking us into the heart of an elusive society. We see her subjects fall in love, nurture ambitions, and struggle with survival and betrayal. their stories form a haunting portrait of a bizarre society and the cost it exacts on its citizens.

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

In the last decade of the 20th century, in a capital city in Europe, the unimaginable is happening. Take a walk down Sarajevo's Logavina Street with Barbara Demick, author of the prize-winning Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Demick spent much of 1993 through 1995 on one street in the Bosnian capital with a front-row seat as a country was torn apart by ethnic warfare and a modern city was held under siege. She watched and recorded as neighbors, Muslim, Serb and Croat, tried to keep their society intact against the forces of intolerance. In Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood, meet a teenager whose parents were killed by a mortar shell in front of her, a dentist debating whether to emigrate to America, a besotted husband separated from his wife by war, obsessing about her lipstick color. Demick's coverage of the Bosnian war won the Robert F. Kennedy award for international reporting, the Polk award for international reporting and was a finalist for the Pulitzer.

Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood

History

Americas

Andrews and McMeel

Just as she did with North Korea, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world. She tells the story of a Tibetan town perched eleven thousand feet above sea level that is one of the most difficult places in all of China for foreigners to visit. Ngaba was one of the first places where the Tibetans and the Chinese Communists encountered one another. In the 1930s, Mao Zedong’s Red Army fled into the Tibetan plateau to escape their adversaries in the Chinese Civil War. By the time the soldiers reached Ngaba, they were so hungry that they looted monasteries and ate religious statues made of flour and butter—to Tibetans, it was as if they were eating the Buddha. Their experiences would make Ngaba one of the engines of Tibetan resistance for decades to come, culminating in shocking acts of self-immolation. Eat the Buddha spans decades of modern Tibetan and Chinese history, as told through the private lives of Demick’s subjects, among them a princess whose family is wiped out during the Cultural Revolution, a young Tibetan nomad who becomes radicalized in the storied monastery of Kirti, an upwardly mobile entrepreneur who falls in love with a Chinese woman, a poet and intellectual who risks everything to voice his resistance, and a Tibetan schoolgirl forced to choose at an early age between her family and the elusive lure of Chinese money. All of them face the same Do they resist the Chinese, or do they join them? Do they adhere to Buddhist teachings of compassion and nonviolence, or do they fight? Illuminating a culture that has long been romanticized by Westerners as deeply spiritual and peaceful, Demick reveals what it is really like to be a Tibetan in the twenty-first century, trying to preserve one’s culture, faith, and language against the depredations of a seemingly unstoppable, technologically all-seeing superpower. Her depiction is nuanced, unvarnished, and at times shocking.

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town

Granta Books

Eat the Buddha The Story of Modern Tibet Through the People of One Town

Granta Publications

A gripping portrait of modern Tibet told through the lives of its people, from the Samuel Johnson prizewinning author of Nothing to Envy\nLONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 
A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK\nONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR IN FINANCIAL TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, SPECTATOR\n'You simply cannot understand China without reading Barbara Demick on Tibet' 
- Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition\nIn 1950, China claimed sovereignty over Tibet, leading to decades of unrest and resistance. Barbara Demick chronicles the Tibetan tragedy from Ngaba, a defiant town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau. From the stories of Ngaba's last princess and those who experienced the struggle sessions of Mao's revolution to the experiences of today's monks and townsfolk suffering repression under China's rule, Demick paints a riveting portrait of Tibet past and present as it fights for its identity against one of the most powerful countries in the world.

Eat the Buddha: Life, Death and Conflict in a Tibetan Town: Life, Death, and Resistance in a Tibetan Town

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Granta Publications Ltd.

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 
A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week\nFrom the Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Nothing to Envy, a riveting portrait of 21st-century Tibetan life lived in the shadow of modern China, through the stories from one Tibetan town.\n'[Barbara Demick] has achieved something remarkable [...] Gripping' 
- the Economist\nIn 1950, China claimed sovereignty over Tibet, leading to decades of unrest and resistance, defining the country today. In Eat the Buddha, Barbara Demick chronicles the Tibetan tragedy from Ngaba, a defiant town on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau where dozens of Tibetans have shocked the world since 2009 by immolating themselves.\nFollowing the stories of the last princess of the region, of Tibetans who experienced the struggle sessions of Mao's Cultural Revolution, of the recent generations of monks and townsfolk experiencing renewed repression, Demick paints a riveting portrait of recent Tibetan history, opening a window onto Tibetan life today, and onto the challenges Tibetans face while locked in a struggle for identity against one of the most powerful countries in the world.\n'An illuminating and important book' 
- Kapka Kasabova, author of To The Lake and Border

Eat the Buddha: The Story of Modern Tibet Through the People of One Town

Nothing To Envy

Spine creased, cover worn, page edges tanned. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.

Nothing To Envy: Real Lives In North Korea

Asia

Granta

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barbara Demick. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Barbara Demick

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barbara Demick. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Nothing to Envy: Love, Life and Death in North Korea

Nothing to Envy: Love, Life and Death in North Korea

Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood

Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town

Eat the Buddha The Story of Modern Tibet Through the People of One Town

Eat the Buddha: Life, Death and Conflict in a Tibetan Town: Life, Death, and Resistance in a Tibetan Town

Eat the Buddha: The Story of Modern Tibet Through the People of One Town

Nothing To Envy

Nothing To Envy: Real Lives In North Korea

Nothing To Envy