A Review By Zoe Boulton  

“Nothing to Envy” is the 2010 winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction. I have been intending to read this for over a year now, I have no idea why I put it off for so long. I am also reading another fantastic book about North Korea called- “Under the Loving Care of the Heavenly Father” by Bradley K. Martin, but this is a much more weighty, academic work, which is quoted several times in Demick’s book. “Nothing to Envy” is less in depth about why and how North Korea has become the only total dicatorship in the world, but it is quicker and easier to read, and as a piece of journalism, it is excellent.
 
Demick follows the personal stories of several North Korean defectors from Chongjin- a city far in the North, several days train journey away from the show-case capital of Pyongyang. She begins with the reasonably prosperous times of the 1980s, when food was still distributed and factories were able to manufacture goods, through the terrible famine of the 1990s which killed 20% of Chongjin’s population, and right up to the present day. The most interesting person documented, in my opinion, was the quietly brave Mrs. Song. For much of her life Mrs. Song didn’t believe that the regime she lived under was opressive, and was utterly devout in her love of the Great Leader. In the midst of harrowing starvation and terrible deaths within her family, she began to doubt her country, but she still had no desire to leave. Her transformation by the end of the book was wonderful.
 
This was a book that I couldn’t put down. My only fault with it is a couple of editing issues which grated a little considering this is a book by a Pulitzer Prize finalist, surely it should have been proof read more thoroughly. That quibble aside, the stories of the individuals is what is important. I have read much about North Korea, often in terms of atrocities and statistics, and from the point of view of Westerners in Pyongyang. This is the first time I have read such detailed personal accounts of every day life. I highly recommend this book, I think North Korea is somewhere that we, in the West, should have a greater understanding of.