Barbara Demick
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AUTHOR: Daughters of the Bamboo Grove, Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town; Nothing to Envy (N. Korea),Logavina Street (Bosnia)
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Articles by Barbara Demick
Nulla da invidiare. Vite normali in Corea del Nord di Barbara Demick
Autore: Barbara Demick Categoria: Saggistica Casa editrice: Iperborea Anno di pubblicazione: 2026 Ritenere l’occidente inidoneo a impartire lezioni di democrazia non significa parteggiare per regimi autocratici tipo Corea del Nord. Probabile che anche a quelle latitudini esistano sostenitori della linea di governo ma ogni dittatura - evidente o democratizzata che sia – può contare sui propri adepti, in fede o malafede.
The Chinese Adoptees Who Were Stolen
When she logged on, all seemed as anticipated. The test listed her ancestry as 99.9 per cent East Asian and Indigenous American. (At the time, the two were lumped together by the company.) No great surprise there—she had been adopted in 2002 from China, one of more than a hundred and sixty thousand children sent abroad to the United States and other countries in the course of three decades.
The Chinese Adoptees Who Were Stolen
In September of 2022, at the start of her senior year at Indiana’s Purdue University, Mia Griffin was working in her bedroom, laptop propped up on her knees, when an e-mail came in from 23andMe saying that her genetic testing was completed. Mia was not in a hurry. She’d bought the kit a year before, when she’d seen a sale on Amazon. It was an impulse buy for which her enthusiasm had quickly waned.
How China’s Adoption Market Led to Child Trafficking | China Books Review
Ed: In Daughters Of The Bamboo Grove (Random House, May 2025), Barbara Demick tells the story of two identical twins born in China but separated at birth out of fear of repurcussions under the one-child policy. Below, she focuses on the context of international adoption and child trafficking that was widespread in the 1990s and 2000s. Join us tonight at Asia Society in New York for the book launch.
The End of Adoptions from China
It was, to some, a beautiful thing. In 1992, the Chinese Communist Party decided to send children abroad for adoption. Child abandonment had surged in the preceding decade because of a law that restricted most families to one child and brutally penalized violators. Most of the abandoned children were newborn girls, discarded as a result of a long-standing patriarchal tradition in which sons care for their parents in old age. If families could have only one child, they wanted a boy.
"Trzy lata zajęło nam trzymanie się za ręce. Kolejne sześć, zanim się pocałowaliśmy...". Opowieści z Korei Północnej
Po raz pierwszy zetknęłam się z życiem w Korei Północnej pośrednio, ale "na żywo" ponad dziesięć lat temu, kiedy mój przyjaciel wrócił z podróży turystycznej — podróży, która spełniła od dawna skrywane marzenie.
Barbara Demick’s China Bookshelf
Barbara Demick is a journalist focused on Asia, and author of Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2010), Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo Neighborhood (2012) and Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town (2020). She was bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Beijing and Seoul, and previously reported from the Middle East and Balkans for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
How living through the siege of Sarajevo prepared me for coronavirus
(Jacqueline Arzt / Associated Press ) Op-Ed,COVID-19 Pandemic Barbara Demick April 7, 2020 I started my career as a foreign correspondent in the 1990s, reporting and living for months on end in Sarajevo, a relatively modern European city subjected to an almost medieval siege as it was encircled, isolated and bombarded. The siege of Sarajevo lasted for three years. By the time it was over, 14,000 people were dead about 2% two percent of the citys population.
Best Nonfiction Books of the Past 25 Years
With more and more books published every year, it's hard to know which ones to read. In the UK, we are lucky to have the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction (known as the Samuel Johnson Prize until 2014). A panel of judges picks out the best nonfiction books of the year. Though there is only one winner, the books on the prize's shortlist (and even its longlist) tend to be excellent. Books are chosen not only for their interesting subject matter but also because they're highly readable.
Why They Write: Three Masters of Non-Fiction on Poverty, Propaganda, and Lies.
Three adventurous journalists discuss tough assignments, from ordinary life in North Korea to Russia’s culture of disinformation, to war in Sudan. And why Orwell still matters — a lot. Moderated by Ilya Marritz, NPR and ProPublica reporter. Featuring Barbara Demick Barbara Demick is an author and foreign correspondent. Her most recent book is Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town (published in 2020), shortlisted for the Orwell among other awards.
Op-Ed: Learn Ukrainian, defeat Russia
In Chernihiv, northeast of Kyiv, Ukrainian language lessons take place in one of the few intact rooms in the city’s public library, damaged earlier this year when the Russians pummeled the city with missiles. With Ukraine’s utilities under attack, heating is scarce. So on a sub-freezing December day, the students wear winter coats, sipping tea poured from a thermos for additional warmth. No matter the discomfort, nobody complains.
Jíst Buddhu
O knize Jíst Buddhu Malé a velké dějiny jednoho tibetského města. Osobní příběhy Tibeťanů z různých společenských vrstev na pozadí dějinných událostí. Jak se žije v zemi, jejíž kulturu, víru i jazyk chce pohltit čínská supervelmoc? Princezna, mnich, trhovkyně, intelektuál i školačka se musí rozhodnout, zda zůstanou v Čínou okupovaném Tibetu, nebo odejdou do exilu za dalajlamou. Budou se řídit buddhistickým učením nenásilí, nebo pozvednou zbraně?
Book World: After the horror of Sandy Hook, an assault on truth began
Dutton. 482 pp. $28 - - - On Dec. 14, 2012, a troubled young man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and gunned down 26 people, most of them children, before killing himself. One might say the massacre was the culmination of years of untreated mental illness in the gunman, Adam Lanza - a 20-year-old recluse who had long harbored violent fantasies. But in many ways this was merely Act 1, Scene 1 in a drama of escalating madness. More horror was yet to come.
Book Marks reviews of Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth by Elizabeth Williamson
Publisher Dutton Books Date March 8, 2022 Elizabeth Williamson's investigation of the aftermath of a school shooting, the work of Sandy Hook parents who fought to defend themselves, and the truth of their children's fate against the frenzied distortions of online deniers and conspiracy theorists. Rave DONNA EDWARDS, The Associated Press ... exactly what it purports to be, though the title couldn’t have prepared me for the level of schooling I was about to get ...
IWillNotWatch - #NoBeijing2022
Follow us to stay up to date! Beijing 2022 will give China a global platform to attempt to gloss over extreme human rights abuses and legitimise the occupation of Tibet. But you don’t need to watch! We have put together a library of films, books, music, podcasts, and other information to ensure that you can find out more about Tibet, East Turkistan, Hong Kong, and human rights in China.
The Best of Books 2021
Editors’ Picks In this deft, textured work of intellectual history, Mitter opens a window into the legacy of China’s experience during World War II, showing how historical memory lives on in the present and contributes to the constant evolution of Chinese nationalism.
Stranger in the Shogun's City
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography Winner of the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography A “captivating” (The Washington Post) work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo - the city that would become Tokyo - and a portrait of a great city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West.
Boek | De laatste prinses - Barbara Demick
'Demick schittert.' **** NRC Handelsblad 1958, Ngawa, Tibet: Als de zevenjarige Gonpo, kroonprinses van de Mei-Dynastie, na een reis met haar moeder terugkeert naar haar stad, ziet ze vanuit de verte bij hun paleis tenten van het Chinese volksbevrijdingsleger staan. De Chinese invasie betekent het einde van de wereld zoals ze die heeft gekend. Haar vader wordt afgezet, de boeddhistische kloosters moeten sluiten en de Dalai Lama gaat in ballingschap.
Life and Death in a Tibetan Town" by Barbara Demick
In the early twentieth century, during a period when Tibet was effectively self-governed, it was known as “the hermit kingdom.” This moniker reflected the general remoteness of the place, reinforced by the altitude of its habitable plateaus, the forbidding mountain ranges (including the Himalayas) that hem Tibet in, and the supposedly insular character of its people, whose abiding wish, it was said, was to be left alone.
Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town
In This Review In This Review Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town In the early twentieth century, during a period when Tibet was effectively self-governed, it was known as “the hermit kingdom.” This moniker reflected the general remoteness of the place, reinforced by the altitude of its habitable plateaus, the forbidding mountain ranges (including the Himalayas) that hem Tibet in, and the supposedly insular character of its people, whose abiding wish, it was said, was to be left...
The Best Narrative Nonfiction Books
Thanks for putting together this reading list of five of the best narrative nonfiction books. Before we begin, could you explain what narrative nonfiction is and why a writer might choose to write in this form? I would describe narrative nonfiction as nonfiction that uses some of the devices we associate with fictional writing.
Buddhist Books Spring 2021
magazine Books, OpeningsArts & Culture The latest in Buddhist publishing, plus a book worth rereading By Wendy Biddlecombe Agsar Spring 2021 Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town by Barbara Demick Random House, July 2020, $28, 352 pp., cloth Eat the Buddha is an engaging read about the history, culture, and heartache of Ngaba, a county in China’s Sichuan province, where Tibetan resistance to the Chinese Communists runs deep.
The Cultural Revolution's Awful Truths
In china, history long occupied a quasi-religious status. During imperial times, dating back thousands of years and enduring until the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, historians’ dedication to recording the truth was viewed as a check against wrongdoing by the emperor. Rulers, though forbidden from interfering, of course tried. Read Full Article »
"Eat The Buddha" By Barbara Demick
Eat The Buddha is a gripping portrait of Tibet, spanning decades of Tibetan and Chinese modern history and told through the lives of its people. Award-winning journalist Barbara Demick explores one of the most hidden corners of the world, telling the story of a Tibetan town eleven thousand feet above sea level.
Nothing To Envy by Barbara Demick
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Notable Books of 2020: A Baker’s Dozen of Fiction and Non-Fiction
It’s the perfect time to read Proust. That’s what I thought at the beginning of the lockdown. At the end of the year, I haven’t managed even the first page of his Remembrance of Things Past. It wasn’t just Proust. The pandemic provided privileged time to read, but took away the focus. The Booker Prize winner, the presidential memoir, the final instalment of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy: all these and more gather dust on the to-be-read pile.
Review: ‘The World Turned Upside Down,’ by Yang Jisheng
Rebel historians chronicle a past that the Chinese Communist Party grows ever more intent on erasing. During the Cultural Revolution, a rebel group subjects a rival leader to a criticism session. (Li Zhensheng / Contact Press Images) This article was published online on December 18, 2020. In China, history long occupied a quasi-religious status.
The best books of 2020: history of place
Our own category, ‘history of place’ covers all those books that tell the story of a particular location – its landscapes, people, wars, celebrations and culture.
China’s Clampdown on Hong Kong
China’s Clampdown on Hong Kong class="dek mt-xs-3 mt-lg-6 mb-xs-3 text-center">Despite mass protests and China’s promises when it took back Hong Kong from Britain in 1997, Beijing’s new security law is crushing the former colony’s autonomy.
China’s Clampdown on Hong Kong
Vernon Yuen/NurPhoto/Getty Images Antigovernment protesters, Hong Kong, August 2019 As the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China approached, commentary in the English-language press about the future of the colony was written in the elegiac style of obituaries, extolling the past and lamenting the future. In June 1995 “The Death of Hong Kong” was the cover story of the international edition of Fortune magazine. Predictions of Hong Kong’s demise proved to be premature.
Geographical’s pick of the books: September
BOOK OF THE MONTH: THE BOOK OF TRESPASS: Crossing the Lines that Divide Us by Nick Hayes It’s tempting to think of the English countryside as a bucolic landscape that, with minor restrictions, we are all free to roam. Picturesque rivers, hills, woodlands and meadows criss-crossed with public footpaths that we can explore to our heart’s content. Yet that’s far from the reality. In fact, most of England is out of bounds to the general public.
Book Review: “Eat the Buddha” offers history, narrative of Buddhism - SpokaneFāVS
By Bill Williams Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town By Barbara Demick 325 pp, Random House, $28 People were shocked when they learned that a Buddhist monk in Tibet had set himself on fire and burned to death to protest the Chinese invasion of Tibet. This well-written book, “Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town,” describes the attempt to turn Buddhist Tibet into a province of China.
Book review: Voices from a forbidden land
A detailed, vivid — and rare — portrait of the Tibetans struggling as their way of life is eroded by Beijing By Tania Branigan / The Observer Reincarnation of all living Buddhas “must comply with Chinese laws,” Beijing reminded Tibetans last spring. At stake, of course, is the identity of the next Dalai Lama. Inconveniently for China, which sees the Tibetan spiritual leader as “a jackal in monk’s robes” and would prefer someone more pliant, he insists he will be reborn in exile.
Rana Mitter - One Country, One System
A few years ago, I heard a Chinese anthropologist speaking about her work in Tibet. She recalled an incident where she tried to give her Tibetan interlocutors some Chinese apples, until they gently explained that they preferred local fruit, which could be more easily sliced up and distributed to their relatives, typically much more numerous than in ethnic Chinese families.
The Chinese Town That Became the Self-Immolation Capital of the World
Nonfiction Buddhist monks on their way to celebrate a festival at Kirti Monastery. July 28, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET EAT THE BUDDHA Life and Death in a Tibetan Town By Barbara Demick Tibetans encountered Chinese Communists for the first time during the Long March of the mid-1930s, when Mao’s Red Army evaded the Nationalist forces by heading west and north through the Tibetan plateau. The famished Chinese soldiers picked the fields bare.
EAT THE BUDDHA | Kirkus Reviews
A portrait of one town reveals Tibet's tragic past. Demick, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who served as its bureau chief in Beijing and Seoul, offers a vibrant, often heartbreaking history of Tibet, centered on Ngaba, which sits at 11,000 feet on the plateau where Tibet collides with China.
A Monk’s Life in Turmoil in Tibet
From a quick glance, you might have been unsure if the boy standing in the crowd of onlookers was Chinese or Tibetan. You saw plenty of both in Ngaba, a small town on the edge of the Tibetan plateau. He wore tinted glasses and had a big puff of hair in a garish red hue, which must have come from a cheap drugstore dye. His face was obscured by a nubby black-and-white scarf tugged over his nose. The boy knew he looked peculiar, but he didn’t care.
China Declares Victory Over Both the Coronavirus and Critics of the Communist Party at the Biggest Political Event of the Year
If there was a moment during the coronavirus crisis when the Chinese Communist Party looked as if it was losing its grip, it came on the night of February 6th, as the ophthalmologist turned whistle-blower Li Wenliang lay dying in a Wuhan hospital. In a small act of bravery that is now legend, Li had warned fellow-doctors in an internal chat group, in late December, of the impending contagion, which earned him a reprimand and a threat of arrest for spreading rumors.
In North Korea, the Fourth Man Could Be a Woman
The conventional wisdom is that a woman could never ascend to the leadership of North Korea, a country stuck in a time warp of passé fashions, hairdos, music, and social mores. A toxic mix of Confucianism and totalitarianism indentures women to their husbands, to their in-laws, and, ultimately, to a male-dominated regime. With a few exceptions (the best known being the vice foreign minister, Choe Son Hui), North Korea’s senior cadres are almost entirely male.
How living through the siege of Sarajevo prepared me for coronavirus
I started my career as a foreign correspondent in the 1990s, reporting and living for months on end in Sarajevo, a relatively modern European city subjected to an almost medieval siege as it was encircled, isolated and bombarded. The siege of Sarajevo lasted for three years. By the time it was over, 14,000 people were dead – about 2% of the city’s population. I met no one who hadn’t lost a close relative or friend.
Commentary: How living through the siege of Sarajevo prepared me for coronavirus
...CRITICAL FIRE WEATHER CONDITIONS EXPECTED TODAY... ...RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 8 PM CDT THIS EVENING FOR WIND AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY FOR FIRE WEATHER ZONES 005, 006, 007, 039, 040, 041, 046, 047, 048, 049, 060, 061, 062, 063, 064, 072, 073, 074, 075, 076, 077, 082, 083, 084, 085, 086 AND 087... * AFFECTED AREA...IN KANSAS, FIRE WEATHER ZONE 005 PHILLIPS, FIRE WEATHER ZONE 006 SMITH AND FIRE WEATHER ZONE 007 JEWELL.
Commentary: How living through the siege of Sarajevo prepared me for coronavirus
I started my career as a foreign correspondent in the 1990s, reporting and living for months on end in Sarajevo, a relatively modern European city subjected to an almost medieval siege as it was encircled, isolated and bombarded. The siege of Sarajevo lasted for three years. By the time it was over, 14,000 people were dead - about 2% of the city's population. I met no one who hadn't lost a close relative or friend.
Commentary: How living through the siege of Sarajevo prepared me for coronavirus
Commentary: How living through the siege of Sarajevo prepared me for coronavirus × You have run out of free articles. You can support our newsroom by joining at our lowest rate! Already a subscriber? Log in or Activate your account. Loading&hellp; {{html}} Thanks for being a subscriber. Sorry, your subscription does not include this content. Please call 866-839-6397 to upgrade your subscription.
W oblężeniu. Życie pod ostrzałem na sarajewskiej ulicy
Logavina to cicha i spokojna uliczka położona w sercu miasta, słynącego z tolerancji i kosmopolitycznego uroku. Wybuch wojny postawił na głowie życie jej mieszkańców, Bośniaków, Chorwatów i Serbów, którzy do tej pory żyli obok siebie, nie zwracając uwagi na dzielące ich różnice. W oblężonym Sarajewie, pozbawieni ogrzewania i elektryczności, przy coraz bardziej ograniczonych zasobach żywności i wody, każdego dnia muszą teraz walczyć o przetrwanie swoje i bliskich.
The Star Power of Jane Fonda's Climate-Change Arrests
The Star Power of Jane Fonda's Climate-Change Arrests The actress and activist spent the eve of her eighty-second birthday protesting alongside friends and fellow-celebrities, and earning her latest arrest, in an ongoing campaign to raise awareness of climate change. Read Full Article »
The Star Power of Jane Fonda’s Climate-Change Arrests
On December 21st, Jane Fonda turned eighty-two, and it might have been her best birthday yet. Since October, Fonda has been getting herself and her celebrity pals arrested as part of an ongoing campaign to raise awareness of climate change, through acts of civil disobedience. Last Friday, on the eve of her birthday, she vowed to mark her advancing age by bringing eighty-two people along to get arrested with her.
The Great Successor
We have updated our Privacy Policy Please take a moment to review it. By continuing to use this site, you agree to the terms of our updated Privacy Policy. Astonishing and insightful - the inside story of the mercurial man now making headlines, and history. Essential reading Lyse Doucet By far the most complete insight into the Hermit Kingdom I have ever seen. Full of fascinating details Christina Lamb Superb . . .
Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books
“The narrow boundaries of our knowledge have expanded radically with the publication of Los Angeles Times correspondent Barbara Demick’s Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. . . . Elegantly structured and written, Nothing To Envy is a groundbreaking work of literary nonfiction.”–Slate “Excellent . . . lovely work of narrative nonfiction . . .
Nothing To Envy: Ordinary Lives In North Korea
Pricing and Purchase Info $19.76 online $24.00 list price save 17% Prices and offers may vary in store In stock online Ships free on orders over $25 Available in stores An eye-opening account of life inside North Korea—a closed world of increasing global importance—hailed as a “tour de force of meticulous reporting” (The New York Review of Books) NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST In this landmark addition to the literature of totalitarianism,...
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