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🧲 Books like this

The Aquariums of Pyongyang

Kang Chol-Hwan, Pierre Rigoulot · back to the book

What’s in it

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24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
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KoreaSurveillance StateAutobiographyMemoir & Biography
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Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

Blaine Harden · 256 pages

The heartwrenching New York Times bestseller about the only known person born inside a North Korean prison camp to have escaped North Korea’s political prison camps have existed twice as long as Stalin’s Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. No one born and raised in these camps is known to have escaped. No one, that is, except Shin Dong-hyuk. In Escape From C

KoreaPrisonSurveillance StateMemoir & Biography
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The Girl with Seven Names: A North Korean Defector’s Story

Hyeonseo Lee, David John · 320 pages

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 t

KoreaSurveillance StateAutobiographyMemoir & Biography
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The Orphan Master's Son

Adam Johnson · 456 pages

An epic novel and a thrilling literary discovery, The Orphan Master’s Son follows a young man’s journey through the icy waters, dark tunnels, and eerie spy chambers of the world’s most mysterious dictatorship, North Korea. Pak Jun Do is the haunted son of a lost mother—a singer “stolen” to Pyongyang—and an influential father who runs Long Tomorrows, a work camp for orphans. There the boy is giv

KoreaPrisonSurveillance StateTorture
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Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

Suki Kim · 291 pages

"A ... memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign"--Amazon.com It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields-- except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portra

KoreaSurveillance StateMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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PrisonSurveillance StateMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Stars Between the Sun and Moon: One Woman's Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom

Lucia Jang, Susan McClelland · 288 pages

"An incredible memoir of North Korea by a woman who defied the government to keep her family alive. Born in 1970s North Korea, Lucia Jang grew up in a typical household--her parents worked in the factories and the family scraped by on rationed rice and a small garden. Nightly, she bowed to her photo of Kim Il-Sung. But it was the beginning of a chaotic period with a decade-long famine resulting in

KoreaAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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A Thousand Miles to Freedom: My Escape from North Korea

Eunsun Kim, Sebastien Falletti · 228 pages

"Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child Eunsun loved her country--despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the country-wide famine escalated ... Her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister, not knowing that they were

KoreaAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Guantánamo Diary

Mohamedou Ould Slahi · 448 pages

"This is the first and only diary written by a still-imprisoned Guantánamo detainee. Since 2002, Mohamedou Slahi has been imprisoned at the detainee camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In all these years, the United States has never charged him with a crime. Although he was ordered released by a federal judge, the U.S. government fought that decision, and there is no sign that the United States plans to

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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KoreaAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela · 638 pages

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly recreates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Man Is Wolf to Man: Surviving the Gulag

Janusz Bardach, Kathleen Gleeson · 392 pages

It is a true story of an idealistic Jewish man who who gets caught up in and believes the political ideologies of communism and a progressive, social justice political system until he actually experiences living under that system which sends him and countless other political prisoners to cruel prison camps and a gulag in Siberia. This is one of those kinds of books that you don’t want to put

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Into the Whirlwind

Evgenia Ginzburg · 331 pages

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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The Heavenly Man: The Remarkable True Story of Chinese Christian Brother Yun

Paul Hattaway, Brother Yun · 352 pages

Brother Yun is a entrepeneur leader in the underground Christian church of China. He lives now in Germany and this book is a biography of his life and inspiring walk with Jesus.

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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If I Perish

Esther Ahn Kim · 350 pages

Ahn Ei Sook stood alone among thousands of kneeling people in bold defiance of the tyrannical command to bow to a pagan Japanese shrine. After months on the run, she was captured and condemned to a living death in the filth and degradation of a Japanese prison. Although she was imprisoned and tormented for many years, her determination and fortitude never diminished. In spite of the brutality, opp

KoreaPrisonMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Somewhere Inside: One Sister's Captivity in North Korea and the Other's Fight to Bring Her Home

Laura Ling, Lisa Ling · 322 pages

The never-before-told story of Laura Ling's capture by the North Koreans and the role her sister played in bringing about her rescue by President Bill Clinton. A piercing look inside the world's most secretive nation as well as a moving tale of sisterhood and love.

KoreaPrisonMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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My Life As A Traitor

Zarah Ghahramani · 249 pages

Ghahramani, 20, an Iranian student, was swept off the streets of Tehran and taken to the notorious Evin prison, where criminals and political dissidents were held side by side in conditions of legendary brutality. Her crime, she asserts, was sliding back her headscarf to feel the sun on her hair. This led to a political activism fueled by the fearless idealism of the young. Her parents begged her

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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In God's Underground

Richard Wurmbrand · 270 pages

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Hole in My Life

Jack Gantos · 200 pages

On the surface, the narrative tumbles from one crazed moment to the next as Gantos pieces together the story of his restless final year of high school, his short-lived career as a criminal, and his time in prison. But running, just beneath the action is the story of how Gantos - once he was locked up in a small, yellow-walled cell - moved from wanting to be a writer to writing, and how dedicating

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Under the Same Sky: A Memoir of Survival, Hope, and Faith

Joseph Kim, Stephan Talty · 273 pages

"A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage Inside the hidden and mysterious world of North Korea, Joseph Kim lived a young boy's normal life until he was five. Then disaster struck: the first wave of the Great Famine, a long, terrible

KoreaAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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When Hell Was in Session

Jeremiah A. Denton Jr., Ed Brandt · 246 pages

Denton, a Navy pilot, recounts his experiences as a prisoner of war held in Hanoi's infamous Hanoi Hilton prison complex.

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Life After Death

Damien Echols · 399 pages

Falsely accused of murdering three eight-year-old boys in Arkansas, eighteen-year-old Echols, deemed the "ringleader" of the West Memphis Three, was sentenced to death. Then in August 2011 the WMT were released. In these pages, Echols describes the terrors he experienced every day and his outrage toward the American justice system, and offers a firsthand account of living on Death Row in heartbrea

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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Night

Elie Wiesel · 126 pages

PrisonAutobiographyMemoir & BiographyNonfiction
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