Download or read book The Sorcerer of Pyongyang written by Marcel Theroux and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-11-29 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of the “sublime” (The New York Times) Far North, a finalist for the National Book Award, returns with a mesmerizing novel about a North Korean boy whose life is irrevocably changed when he stumbles across a mysterious Western book—a guide to Dungeons & Dragons. Ten-year-old Jun-su is a bright and obedient boy whose only desire is to be a credit to his family, his nation, and most importantly, his Dear Leader. However, when he discovers a copy of The Dungeon Master’s Guide, left behind in a hotel room by a rare foreign visitor, a new and colorful world opens up to him. With the help of an English-speaking teacher, Jun-su deciphers the rules of the famous role-playing game and his imaginary adventures sweep him away from the harsh reality of a famine-stricken North Korea. Over time, the game leads Jun-su on a spellbinding and unexpected journey through the hidden layers of his country, toward precocious success, glory, love, betrayal, prison, a spell at the pinnacle of the North Korean elite, and an extraordinary kind of redemption. A vivid, uplifting, and deeply researched novel, The Sorcerer of Pyongyang is a love story and a tale of survival against the odds. Inspired by the testimony of North Korean refugees and drawing on the author’s personal experience of North Korea, it explores the power of empathy and imagination in a society where they are dangerous liabilities.
Download or read book The Sorcerer of Pyongyang written by Marcel Theroux and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the discovery of The Dungeon Master's Guide draws him into a colorful new world, ten-year-old Jun-su, with the help of an English-speaking teacher, deciphers the rules of this famous role-playing game, which sweeps him away from the harsh reality of a famine-stricken North Korea.
Download or read book Far North written by Marcel Theroux and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Far North is a 2009 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. My father had an expression for a thing that turned out bad. He'd say it had gone west. But going west always sounded pretty good to me. After all, westwards is the path of the sun. And through as much history as I know of, people have moved west to settle and find freedom. But our world had gone north, truly gone north, and just how far north I was beginning to learn. Out on the frontier of a failed state, Makepeace—sheriff and perhaps last citizen—patrols a city's ruins, salvaging books but keeping the guns in good repair. Into this cold land comes shocking evidence that life might be flourishing elsewhere: a refugee emerges from the vast emptiness of forest, whose existence inspires Makepeace to reconnect with human society and take to the road, armed with rough humor and an unlikely ration of optimism. What Makepeace finds is a world unraveling: stockaded villages enforcing an uncertain justice and hidden work camps laboring to harness the little-understood technologies of a vanished civilization. But Makepeace's journey—rife with danger—also leads to an unexpected redemption. Far North takes the reader on a quest through an unforgettable arctic landscape, from humanity's origins to its possible end. Haunting, spare, yet stubbornly hopeful, the novel is suffused with an ecstatic awareness of the world's fragility and beauty, and its ability to recover from our worst trespasses.
Download or read book The Aquariums of Pyongyang written by Chol-hwan Kang and published by Basic Books (AZ). This book was released on 2005-08-24 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part horror story, part historical document, part memoir, part political tract, one man's suffering gives eyewitness proof to an ongoing sorrowful chapter of modern history.
Download or read book Buzz Books 2022 Fall Winter written by and published by Publishers Lunch. This book was released on 2022-05-10 with total page 1136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 21st edition of Buzz Books is a treasure-trove of what readers value the most: substantial excerpts from titles scheduled for publication this fall and winter. Think of it as a compilation of nearly 60 great “singles.” Major bestselling authors such as Alice Feeney and John Irving are featured, along with literary greats Yiyun Li, Elizabeth McCracken, and Kamila Shamsie. Other sure-to-be popular titles are by Lauren Denton, Stephen Markley, and Ellen Marie Wiseman. Buzz Books has had a particularly stellar track record with highlighting the most talented, exciting debut authors, and this edition is no exception with Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You, Jamila Minnicks’ Moonrise Over New Jessup, and Kai Thomas’s In the Upper Country. Our nonfiction selections range from New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv’s exploration of trauma to Cin Fabré’s inspiring story of becoming a Wall Street Trader at 19. Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Thomas Ricks offers a look into the civil rights movement. Finally, we present ten early looks at new work up-and-coming young adult authors Kate Armstrong, Krystal Marquis, and Maya Prasad and more, as well as Nubia, a debut from actor Omar Epps.
Download or read book Immigrant Baggage written by Maxim D. Shrayer and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2023-06-13 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a bilingual master of the literary memoir comes this moving and humorous story of losing immigrant baggage and trying to reclaim it for his American future. In this poignant literary memoir, internationally acclaimed author and Boston College professor Maxim D. Shrayer (Waiting for America) explores both material and immaterial aspects of immigrant baggage. Through a combination of dispassionate reportage, gentle irony, and confessional remembrance, Shrayer writes about traversing the borders and boundaries of the three cultures that have nourished him—Russian, Jewish, and American. The spirit of nonconformism and the power of laughter come to the rescue of Shrayer’s autobiographical protagonist when he faces existential calamities and life’s misadventures. The aftermath of a dangerous ski accident in Italy reminds the memoirist of history’s black holes. A haunting, Soviet-era theatrical affair pushes the émigré protagonist to the brink of a disaster in a provincial Russian town. Attempting to collect overdue royalties from a Moscow publisher, the expatriate writer tips his hat to Kafka. The book’s six interconnected tales are held together by the memorist’s imperative to make the ordinary absurd and the absurd—ordinary. Shrayer parses a translingual literary life filled with travel, politics, and discovery—and sustained by family love and faith in art’s transcendence.
Download or read book Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader written by Bradley K. Martin and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-01-10 with total page 912 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bradley K. Martin presents an analysis of North Korea and the extraordinary family that runs it.
Download or read book The Secret Books written by Marcel Theroux and published by . This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A world on the brink of catastrophe. A two-thousand-year-old mystery. A lost gospel. A young man flees the drudgery of shopkeeping in Tsarist Russia to make a new life among the bohemians and revolutionaries of nineteenth-century Paris. Beginning a treacherous journey through a world of spies and double-cross, propaganda, lost love, and anti-Semitism, he enters a modern world where lies have the power of truth. Based on real events, The Secret Books is at once a page-turning adventure and an examination of the stories that humans are willing to kill and to die for.
Download or read book Nothing to Envy written by Barbara Demick and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-09-21 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” (The New York Review of Books) FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD WINNER OF WINNERS AWARD In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism, award-winning journalist Barbara Demick follows the lives of six North Korean citizens over fifteen years—a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il (the father of Kim Jong-un), and a devastating famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Demick brings to life what it means to be living under the most repressive regime today—an Orwellian world that is by choice not connected to the Internet, where displays of affection are punished, informants are rewarded, and an offhand remark can send a person to the gulag for life. She takes us deep inside the country, beyond the reach of government censors, and through meticulous and sensitive reporting we see her subjects fall in love, raise families, nurture ambitions, and struggle for survival. One by one, we witness their profound, life-altering disillusionment with the government and their realization that, rather than providing them with lives of abundance, their country has betrayed them. Praise for Nothing to Envy “Provocative . . . offers extensive evidence of the author’s deep knowledge of this country while keeping its sights firmly on individual stories and human details.”—The New York Times “Deeply moving . . . The personal stories are related with novelistic detail.”—The Wall Street Journal “A tour de force of meticulous reporting.”—The New York Review of Books “Excellent . . . humanizes a downtrodden, long-suffering people whose individual lives, hopes and dreams are so little known abroad.”—San Francisco Chronicle “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.”—John Delury, Slate “At times a page-turner, at others an intimate study in totalitarian psychology.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
Download or read book North Korea through the Looking Glass written by Kongdan Oh and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-05-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty-five years after its founding at the dawn of the cold war, North Korea remains a land of illusions. Isolated and anachronistic, the country and its culture seem to be dominated exclusively by the official ideology of Juche, which emphasizes national self-reliance, independence, and worship of the supreme leader, General Kim Jong Il. Yet this socialist utopian ideal is pursued with the calculations of international power politics. Kim has transformed North Korea into a militarized state, whose nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and continued threat to South Korea have raised alarm worldwide. This paradoxical combination of cultural isolation and military-first policy has left the North Korean people woefully deprived of the opportunity to advance socially and politically. The socialist economy, guided by political principles and bereft of international support, has collapsed. Thousands, perhaps millions, have died of starvation. Foreign trade has declined and the country's gross domestic product has recorded negative growth every year for a decade. Yet rather than initiate the sort of market reforms that were implemented by other communist governments, North Korean leaders have reverted to the economic policies of the 1950s: mass mobilization, concentration on heavy industry, and increased ideological indoctrination. Although members of the political elite in Pyongyang are acutely aware of their nation's domestic and foreign problems, they are plagued by fear and policy paralysis. North Korea Through the Looking Glass sheds new light on this remote and peculiar country. Drawing on more than ten years of research—including interviews with two dozen North Koreans who made the painful decision to defect from their homeland—Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig explore what the leadership and the masses believe about their current predicament. Through dual themes of persistence and illusion, they explore North Korea's stubborn adherence to policies that have
Download or read book North Korea written by Paul French and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: North Korea remains one of the least understood nations on earth; a nuclear enabled "Hermit Kingdom" ravaged by economic mismanagement and reliant on illegal weapons sales, smuggling and counterfeiting for most of its foreign reserves while undergoing a prolonged famine and propped up by aid donations. Not a normal country in any sense of the word, its nuclear weapons program makes it a country whose actions could have global ramifications. This book demystifies North Korea through revealing the daily life of its citizens; the political and economic history of the nation; the reasoning behind the country's combative way of engaging the world and the tentative economic reform process now being undertaken. The prospect of a nuclear North Korea preferring brinksmanship to engagement and negotiation, makes understanding Pyongyang's guiding principles, motives and possible future increasingly important.
Download or read book Pyongyang written by Guy Delisle and published by Drawn and Quarterly. This book was released on 2007-05-01 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Pyongyang written by Chris Springer and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part history book, part travel guide of the North Korean capital, this volume combines color photographs with 140 entries detailing the history and uses of various sites of the city (including a number that proclaim "exact location unknown"), from museums, art galleries, and government buildings to ancient tombs and geological features. The entries are preceded by a brief history of North Korea and Pyongyang. Distributed by Saranda Books. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Download or read book See You Again in Pyongyang written by Travis Jeppesen and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2019-05-28 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "close-up look at the cloistered country" (USA Today), See You Again in Pyongyang is American writer Travis Jeppesen's "probing" and "artful" (New York Times Book Review) chronicle of his travels in North Korea--an eye-opening portrait that goes behind the headlines about Trump and Kim, revealing North Koreans' "entrepreneurial spirit, and hidden love of foreign media, as well as their dreams and fears" (Los Angeles Times). In See You Again in Pyongyang, Travis Jeppesen culls from his experiences traveling and studying in North Korea to create a multifaceted portrait of the country and its idiosyncratic capital city. Jeppesen challenges the notion that Pyongyang is merely a "showcase capital" where everything is staged for the benefit of foreigners, as well as the idea that Pyongyangites are brainwashed robots. Jeppesen introduces readers to an array of fascinating North Koreans, from government ministers with a side hustle in black market Western products to young people enamored with American pop culture. Revealing a complex society, rife with contradictions, See You Again in Pyongyang is an essential addition to the literature about one of the world's most fascinating places.
Download or read book In the Land of Kim written by Fragkiska Megaloudi and published by . This book was released on 2019-07-05 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea for this book was born while I was still in North Korea. From the very first days that I arrived, I felt that there was a truth there that needed to be told. It isn't easy to unlock the secrets of North Korea; from the moment you arrive in the country you realise that everything you know or have heard about it is pretty much worthless. I was aware of only part of the truth, and that a part which had reached me already distorted by the lens of foreign journalism and international diplomacy. If we assume that the North Koreans have no understanding of us Westerners, I can safely say that we Westerners are in the dark about the North Koreans.This book was written so that I could say what I saw and what I learnt during these two years I lived the life of an expat in Pyongyang. I wanted to give the picture of the country that I had experienced, without exaggerations and in as balanced a way as possible. What I had seen there was definitely not "staged". Two years is a long time for all that you see to be staged. I had enjoyed freedom of movement, I was able to visit rural areas, I had seen poverty and undernourished children and destroyed infrastructure. I had seen people gathering snow for drinking water, adolescents searching for food in the garbage in Pyongyang and dirty children in the rain in the provinces. Nobody had hidden these things from me. But I had seen other things as well. In those two years, I saw every day the small victories that improved life. The number of markets growing, people shopping, and children dressed in ever prettier and warmer clothes. Colour had come to North Korea. The electricity cuts had become rarer, people had more free time and, I might dare to say, more freedom, compared to what we imagine and what the case had been ten years before. Having had the rare privilege to talk to lots of North Koreans, to drink and eat with them, I had seen their small and large concerns and I discovered they weren't so different from our own.I would like to believe that when someone finishes reading this book, he or she will know a little more about the country than they did before. And the next time North Korea is in the media, the reader will be in a better position to weigh the information.
Download or read book Every Falling Star UK edition written by Sungju Lee and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who was forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly recreates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, "his brothers," to daily be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir allows young readers to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist.
Download or read book The Pyongyang Paradox written by Chris Westphal and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-07 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
