19.07.10 | Catherine Neilan in The Bookseller
The non-fiction work, subtitled Real Lives in North Korea, had originally been scheduled for paperback publication in January 2011, but was brought out this weekend. The publisher said: "The team at Granta worked flat out to complete the production of paperback edition... within a week of winning the prize."
Sara Holloway, publishing director of Granta Books, said: "We decided to bring it forward after the win, partly as we felt that our new jacket was even more arresting than the original C format jacket, and partly so that we could focus all our energies on selling in one format. It’s also a better format for holiday reading - it’s such an engaging read, as well as being profoundly shocking."
Written by LA Times foreign correspondent Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy looks at ordinary life in the world's most secretive country, weaving together stories of individuals from North Korea's third largest city Chongjin, who have defected to the South.
Characters including the young lovers who never told each other of their disillusionment with the system, the proud factory worker who brought her family up as loyal citizens only to watch them later die of starvation, the once-idealistic doctor who was forced to take bribes to survive and the orphaned child who learned to rely on his own cunning to stay alive.
The North Koreans who flee know nothing of the outside world, and are spurred on only by the suspicion that a better life might be possible beyond the grasp of the ‘Dear Leader’, who insists that they have ‘nothing to envy’.
Holloway added: "We were absolutely thrilled when Nothing to Envy won the prize. It’s such an important book. Using moving, very human stories, Barbara tells you what is really happening in a country usually presented in the media as a complete mystery or a caricature."
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