Sublime

In a loose way this is a “conduct” novel.

eulogized

But once rumours started going around that the Soviet Union had collapsed some years earlier, the grown-ups began whispering about the poor shape the Republic was in. Chongjin had it better than other cities, though not as good as Pyongyang, of course; even so, there were times when rations were cut off for two months and then three months, and sha

obstinate

ascetic

Hamhung is an industrial city with terrible pollution and the most appalling smog I’d ever seen.

then Jun Do remembered that he had no one that mattered to him, which was why his tattoo would be of an actress he’d never seen, taken from a calendar at the helm of a fishing boat.

My strategy had been wrong from square one. I had tried to shout my way out of this absurdity, but the institutionalized cannot do this. Slavers welcome the odd rebel to dress down before the others. In all the prison literature I’ve read, from The Gulag Archipelago to An Evil Cradling to Knuckle Sandwich, rights must be horse-traded and accrued wi

Many North Koreans seemed to consider it their right to leave a reception with a bottle or two of expensive foreign liquor, and embassy staff members often had to be quite direct in preventing them from doing so.