NOTHING TO ENVY Ordinary Lives in North Korea

LOS ANGELES TIMES reporter Barbara Demick uses the firsthand experiences of six North Korean defectors to reveal the starvation, corruption, and poverty of daily life under the nation's repressive Communist regime. Despite the dismal subject, narrator Karen White is engaging; further, she handles the Korean names and accents expertly. As she delivers the defectors' riveting descriptions of life in North Korea during the famine years, the individual stories are deeply touching and ultimately inspiring. She powerfully recounts the great risks they took to escape to South Korea or China. This is an eye-opening and heartbreaking listen. B.C.E. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2010]