National Network for Equitable Library Service

New York Times bestseller. An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world's most ruthless and secretive dictatorships—and the story of one woman's terrifying struggle to avoid capture, repatriation, and guide her family to freedom. As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question, and realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty, and starvation she witnessed, surely her country could not be, as she had been told, "the best on the planet"? Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family.