Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea

A brilliant book. Written like a novel and based on the testimony of various North Korean defectors. Even though we know they'll all make it out, the narrative tension is sometimes insane - and, yeah, OK, I cried through the last 25% of the book (according to my Kindle).

I'm ashamed to say that I had no idea about the North Korean famine in the 1990s, where as many as 2 million people died. It was horrifying. And it's horrifying to read about what life can be like when not only is your country poor and underdeveloped, but your government is Orwellian, almost sociopathic.

Similar - in writing and tone - to Katherine Boo's Beyond the Beautiful Forevers (a book about life in a Bombay slum).