The Girl With Seven Names: A North Korean Defector's Story by Hyeonseo Lee (audiobook)

 genre: memoir, non-fiction

Hyeonseo's story of her life in North Korea and, eventually, of her escape from it, is both harrowing and incredible.  It is one thing to hear about famine in North Korea, or hear that the people who live there are "brainwashed" - and it is another thing entirely to hear the story of ONE person.  One girl who grows up in a totalitarian regime, one girl whose experiences are terrifying (to me as a Westerner) and commonplace (to her and others in the middle class in NK at the time).  It is so hard to read this book and REALLY BELIEVE that people live this way - that this woman, who isn't much younger than me, grew up with public executions, with her social status and thus her family's prospects being so fragile that one word of misstep could send her entire family into prison or worse.  The lack of even just physical freedom - being able to leave your town or city and come back - it is SO FOREIGN to me, the tight fist of control that both N and S Korea and the countries that surround them hold.   The restrictions, the bribery and the amount of corruption, Hyeonseo's experiences were so disheartening.  Sometimes her choices drove me crazy when she was younger, but it was understandable once I considered her trauma and unthinkably isolated upbringing.  Her perseverance is absolutely astonishing and while the book isn't lovely and the writing doesn't stand out as anything special, the STORY she tells is a nail biter.  So glad I listened to this one.