This book was recently shortlisted for a National Book Award, and Demick totally deserves to win for her meticulous reporting on six North Korean defectors to South Korea. I didn't realize how little I knew about North Korea until I read this book. It is full of indelible images: the doctor who discovers that in China, dogs eat better than the people of North Korea; the two young lovers sneaking into the darkness, too frightened and too innocent to do anything more daring than holding hands; a wife watching her foodie husband die of starvation.

Nothing But Envy is heartbreaking in places, but ultimately hopeful (although even the hope is tempered by the realization that so many people lost so many years they can never get back). It's a cliche to say that a nonfiction book is "as compelling as fiction," but I could not put this book down, and even after I finished it I was scouring the Internet for updates on the lives of the six defectors.