Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea (Granta) by Barbara Demick wins the 2010 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize, today Thursday 1 July. In the book Demick weaves together the stories of adversity, resilience and survival of six ordinary people living in Chongin, North Korea.
Through extensive interviews with defectors, Los Angeles Times journalist Barbara Demick shows in a compelling and unforgettable way that this hermetic country is Orwell’s 1984 made reality.
Demick follows the stories of six North Korean citizens; two lovers who dated secretly for a decade and feared to criticise the regime to each other; a young homeless boy; an idealistic woman doctor; a factory worker who loves Kim Il Sung more than her own family; and her rebellious daughter. In the totalitarian regime where they lived, all radio and television broadcasts are government sponsored; Gone with the Wind is a dangerous, banned book and during political rallies, spies study your expression to check your sincerity. It is the only country in the world not connected to the internet.
The title of the book comes from a song North Korean children are taught, “We have nothing to envy in the world”, and until recently people seem to have believed this as they had so little access to information about life outside their own borders.
Evan Davis, chair of the judges and presenter of Radio 4 Today, announced the winner of the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction at the Royal Institute for British Architects (RIBA), London. He comments:
“It is the personal detail in Nothing to Envy that makes it both gripping and moving. Nowhere will you find a better account of real life in North Korea, a society that is all too easily comically typecast by massive parades of co-ordinated flag-wavers. I think we knew this book had something when we found ourselves reading it out loud to spouses and partners. And it is a real testament to Demick’s writing, that a book on such a grim topic can be so hard to put down.”
Barbara Demick is a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, where she has reported from the Middle East and South Korea. She is currently living in Beijing. Her coverage of the war in Sarajevo won the George Polk Award and the Robert F Kennedy Award, and she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting.
“A most perceptive and eye-opening account of everyday life in North Korea” - Jung Chang
“I loved it - I couldn't pull myself away. This is the first book I've read which tells me about the inner lives of individual North Koreans” - Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor, Channel 4 News
Davis was joined on the judging panel by writer and arts editor of the Financial Times, Jan Dalley; executive editor of The Times, Daniel Finkelstein; editor of New Scientist, Roger Highfield; and author and best-selling historian Stella Tillyard.
Each of the five shortlisted authors receives £1,000.
Formerly The BBC FOUR Samuel Johnson Prize, the change in name reflects the BBC’s commitment to broadcasting coverage of the prize on a special edition of BBC TWO’s The Culture Show featuring coverage of the contenders, which goes out tonight at 11.20pm.
The BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2010 Shortlist
· Alex’s Adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos (Bloomsbury)
· Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (Granta)
· Blood Knots by Luke Jennings (Atlantic Books)
· Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin (Penguin, Allen Lane)
· A Gambling Man by Jenny Uglow (Faber and Faber)
· Catching Fire: How Cooking made us Human by Richard Wrangham (Profile Books)
Former Winners
1999 Stalingrad by Antony Beevor (Penguin)
2000 Berlioz: Servitude and Greatness by David Cairns (The Penguin Press)
2001 The Third Reich: A New History by Michael Burleigh (Macmillan)
2002 Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 by Margaret Macmillan (John Murray)
2003 Pushkin: A biography by T.J. Binyon (HarperCollins)
2004 Stasiland by Anna Funder (Granta)
2005 Like a Fiery Elephant by Jonathan Coe (Picador)
2006 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro (Faber & Faber)
2007 Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Bloomsbury)
2008 The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale (Bloomsbury)
2009 Leviathan or The Whale by Philip Hoare (Fourth Estate)
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